The Metamorphosis of Narcissus
by aesc36
Summary: [Sequel to A Scrap of Humanity complete] Harry deals with the emotional and practical repercussions of his new understanding with Draco as a disapproving and hardline Ministry hovers in the background.
1. Chapter One

+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+  
(Ovid )  
  
CHAPTER ONE  
  
The cold, relentless wind that circled the top of the sky whipped through the spread feathers of Harry's wings. He felt a sharp updraft catch him and nearly roll him over, but an automatic correction kept him from an accident and soon he was flying steadily again, navigating the air currents much as if he had been born to them.  
  
Not, he thought wryly, that he *had* - he was simply (or, not-so-simply) an Animagus, a human who had been lucky enough to stumble on the skill to transform into an animal. /No... not just transform,/ he told himself, recalling his early lessons with Minerva McGonagall, his Transfigurations teacher. It was one thing to take the form of a hawk or a cat or a large black dog, another thing entirely to think like it, to use its body in ways often contradictory to human instinct. And, once that was mastered, it was learning how to keep *himself*, his very mind, from devolving into something that was half human, half something else, and different from either. None of it had been easy, and he was still in awe of what his godfather, Sirius Black, and his friends had managed to do: become Animagi without the benefit of being taught.  
  
"Trying to keep Peter's tail from being discovered was incentive enough to get it right," Sirius had told him once. Apparently, Pettigrew had finally mastered transforming into his rat state, but then the problem had arisen of getting *out* -- and one night, when they'd thought they'd conquered it, Pettigrew had ended up with his tail still attached. They couldn't burn it off, Sirius had said irritably, obviously impatient and uncomfortable with the memory, which meant communal showers had been awkward to say the least.  
  
Harry would have smiled at the memory if he could. It was those that kept him human in his extended periods of hawk-ness - the good memories, times with Sirius and Remus, his adventures with Ron and Hermione, Quidditch, Hagrid... All those things. He never thought about the war if he could help it; thinking about that, even about victory, made him want to fly away and hide, because those memories brought back the awful, gripping fear that had held him for eight long years. They brought back the faces of all those who had died, sometimes memories of their actual death and others recollection of learning - learning how Dean Thomas and Parvati Patil had been killed in Exeter, how Cho had vanished one night and had been discovered a week later at an abandoned Death Eater camp...   
  
Cedric, at the beginning of it all, who might have been the luckiest of all of them.  
  
Desperately, Harry shook himself out of those thoughts and flew on, trying not to dwell too much on the sudden, sharp joy of flight. It was better even than flying on his old broomstick, which he could no longer do - a compensation better, maybe, than that thing it made up for losing, but still... it, in its own way, was a reminder.  
  
/Can't I ever just *have* something?/ Harry wondered bitterly. He banked west along the line of a wind shear and dropped downward into calmer air, skimming over the high treetops of an ancient forest. Malfoy Manor had long since ceased to be a dot on the horizon, and he really didn't know where he was - he should just find a place to land, Apparate to Hogsmeade, fly directly to Hogwarts, and be done with it. Something in him resisted the inevitable call of common sense, and so Harry continued to skim on westward.  
  
The day wore on and the shadows lengthened to transform the daylight into half-light, the sun going into hiding behind the clouds. Harry had no idea how long he'd been flying - one of the disadvantages to his hawk form was that he had no real concept of time anymore, only the vague animal time of hunger and the anticipation of coming night. He *was* hungry, he realized, and his hawk-form longed for something he could snatch easily out of the infinite forest beneath him, while his human-self was contemplating what would be on the banquet table...  
  
... and what Ron's reaction would be when Harry would show up.  
  
/Oh, shit./  
  
Harry had sworn on his soul - and those of his parents and other important people in his life - that he'd be back before sunset. More, he had promised to be back before dinner (feeling ridiculously like a kid again), as Ron had told him he was *not* going to jitter his way through dinner wondering where Harry had gone, or if he had been killed... or held hostage by Draco Malfoy.  
  
"Not," Ron had added with a leer, "that I would mind that at this point."  
  
Sighing to himself at Ron's wretched perceptiveness, Harry dropped through the canopy of trees, angling sharply through the thicket of branches. The sharp ends of twigs scratched at him, trying to catch at his feathers, and some managed to drag painfully against his body, but at length, Harry made it to the black, eerie emptiness of the forest floor. No... not black, he thought, grateful for the keen eyesight his hawk form gave him. The world was cast in tones of grays, nothing truly black, and through it as if through a fog moved a bewildering variety of creatures - a fox, birds, squirrels his hawk-self wanted to snatch up, rabbits, the rustle of heather that betrayed an unseen wolf.  
  
It took an effort, more than usual, to change back to his human form. Harry felt it, the shedding of his feathers, the inevitable loss of sight, and the return of pain with greater acuity than he typically did. He winced, hand dropping automatically to grip the cringing muscles of his thigh, and he thought that maybe, just maybe, if he squeezed hard enough the pain would stop - but this was a thought he had had a hundred times before, and no matter what he did, the constant aching tension never went away, but only spiked and dulled.   
  
It was another exercise in near-futility to blank his mind enough to pull out his wand from wind-disheveled robes and concentrate on Apparition: an envisioning of a quiet street in Hogsmeade, a willing of his body to be there, the quick, endless skip in time of his discorporation, and then the split-second materialization of the long-familiar and welcoming front step of Honeydukes right next to him. The smell of chocolate and sugar made his stomach rumble rebelliously - he hadn't eaten all day, except for a hot-cross bun snatched just before leaving in the morning - but he made himself concentrate on transforming again into his hawk form.  
  
More difficulty there; he knew from long experience that the more tired he was, or the more his leg hurt, his transformation would be all the harder. Still, he managed it and flew as fast as he could back up the slope to where the bulk of Hogwarts castle loomed before him. He circled past the Owlery, ignoring the indignant cries of the post owls at such an invasion of their domain, flew over the dark lake and the Whomping Willow (being careful, of course, to keep clear of it), and finally through his open window. The walls around him remained alien, the dwelling of a human, before he forced his mind to the task of transforming yet again.  
  
/Thank God./ Harry collapsed on his bed in relief, burying his face in the pillows. He cracked one eye open enough to see that his clock on the wall read "Just about to be late for dinner," instead of the "Where the hell *are* you?" he had half-expected it to say. /Ron can't complain, then,/ he told himself by way of congratulation. /Not that he'd be complaining necessarily.../  
  
A sharp rap on his door startled him from the haven of rumpled comforters and pillows, but Harry refused to move, instead bellowing for whoever it was to come in.  
  
"You *are* getting to be a curmudgeon," Ron Weasley observed as he stepped in, ghosting soundlessly over the stone floor, an Auror habit he'd learned and something Harry had never quite gotten used to - to be truthful, it unnerved him a bit, even after all these years. Harry could hear the smirk in his friend's words, though, and it dispelled the sudden sense of unease at Ron's entrance. "I bet you'll be turning into Snape any day now."  
  
"Can't. I don't want the Dark Arts job," Harry said into his blankets.  
  
The mattress gave violently under Ron's weight as he dropped onto it, and the springs creaked in momentary protest. Harry sighed, realizing that his best friend was in indefatigably high spirits and what was even more rare, the kind of good mood that refused to be spoiled by someone else's bad day. Or, in this case, someone's bizarre day. Harry couldn't say the past few hours had been bad, by any stretch of the imagination... just strange.  
  
"It's liver and onions today," Ron told him, "but you missed the tongue at lunch, at least."  
  
"Blech." Harry *hated* liver and onions, mostly because it had been Dudley's favorite meal - consequently, Aunt Petunia had served it whenever Dudley decided he wanted to have it, which had been quite often. Even the smell of it was enough to completely ruin his appetite and even make him nauseous, which was what Ron said happened to him every time he came within smelling distance of corned beef. The thought of a freshly killed field mouse was starting to sound attractive. "Maybe I can get Dobby to make something separate, and I can eat in here," he said hopefully.  
  
"If you do, I won't tell Hermione," Ron said, grinning a bit. Harry shared his friend's mirth, remembering Hermione's relentless campaign against the great injustice of the wizarding world. "On the condition," Ron added belatedly, "that you tell me what happened today."  
  
"We talked," Harry said, mentally wincing a bit at the strange sort of stress that fell on the last word. Was he trying to emphasize the "just talked" aspect of it, to avoid Ron's teasing? Very probably. But there was also... /We talked,/ he thought wonderingly. "We didn't fight," he said aloud, pausing over the words. "We talked."  
  
"So you said," Ron agreed. Harry looked for the joking in Ron's voice, but failed to find it. Risking it, he glanced up from his hiding place in his pillows to get a read on Ron's face if his voice was going to be so uncooperative - and he found hazel eyes gazing down at him soberly. His best friend's calm scrutiny was beginning to unsettle Harry when Ron finally said, "Good. I'm glad to hear it."  
  
"I expected to be teased for this," Harry half-complained. "You're disappointing me here, Ron."  
  
/When did I start trying to be the comedic relief?/ he asked himself, seeing that the only reaction he was getting from Ron was a brief smile that didn't even touch his eyes. The smile faded as quickly as it came and Ron studied his hands with great interest. Harry's gaze followed Ron's, caught and lingered on the unexpected gold flash of Ron's wedding band on the ring finger of his left hand. Ever since he and Hermione had been married, Ron hadn't been without that ring. At least, Harry had never seen him without it, and he knew that when Ron started fussing with it, there was something on his mind.  
  
"Alright, Auror, confess," Harry commanded in his best Severus Snape impression. He had the silky, menacing drawl nowhere near right, of course - no one could manage it, not even Draco. /And when did we stop talking about Draco?/  
  
"Hm?" Ron blinked sleepily and swiveled his head to look at Harry as if for the first time. "Did you... did you resolve everything?"  
  
/Okay, so we *are* still talking about Draco./ Harry rolled over onto his back and stared up at the canopy of his bed. The scrollwork was fascinating, almost as much as the looming midnight-black precipice that was Ron Weasley in his Auror robes. /His *Auror* robes?/ Sure enough, the insignia of the Aurors - and the badge marking a member of the Order of Merlin, First Class - shone brilliantly against the black. /Not good./ Swallowing his trepidation, Harry made himself say, "Yes. At least, I think so. We managed to clear up everything in the past, anyway. The future, though, and now... I'm not so sure."  
  
Ron relaxed a bit, although he ran an agitated hand through his hair. Hair, Harry saw (it struck him suddenly, as if seeing it for the first time), that was still impossibly red and bright, thick and starting to get longish. It had been short throughout the war, cropped very close to Ron's skull so at times it had been little more than orangey-red fuzz, but it had been done for good reason: Weasley hair was a painful, and for an Auror, lethal, identity marker. He didn't say anything, but the hand relaxed and fell back into Ron's lap, and after a moment, he told Harry he was glad of it in a voice that didn't sound convincing.  
  
"There's something wrong, Ron," Harry said, squinting up at Ron's face, hurting a bit to see the stonewalled expression that was so very, very wrong on a face more accustomed to openness and honesty. "What is it?"  
  
"It's Fudge." Ron's face might have been perfectly blank, but his voice was stretched wire-taut with strain.  
  
"What about him? I thought you had him all... all squared away, y'know."  
  
A derisive snort answered him. Ron tensed as if about stand up, but then he relaxed, leaning back into the intricately carved bedpost. "I thought so, too," he answered, his voice bitter. Whether the bitterness was for Fudge or himself, Harry couldn't tell - it was probably a little of both, knowing Ron. "Fudge wanted one of his little 'fireside chats', as he calls them just after you left, wanting to know why I had sent the rest of my team off looking for bewitched guinea pigs in Sussex - well, not that specifically, but just wanting to know why it was just myself and Draco going to Hogsmeade this morning. Apparently Lavender got in contact with him - even *after* I specifically ordered her to keep her mouth shut."  
  
Something knotted inside Harry's stomach. /Oh, God./ "Ron," he said past the tension in his throat that threatened to make his voice either a scream or whimper, "is this going to be something that'll get you fired? Or face an inquiry? I don't want that for you."  
  
"You know, Harry," Ron said, looking down at him with a face so old and serious it was for a moment the face of another man, "I sort of hope it does. Dealing with Fudge's paranoia, all the paperwork and the suspicion that anyone in the Ministry might turn out to be some Dark agent lurking... Honestly, I can't take it much longer. Maybe helping out you and Draco'll only put a faster end to this. I'm going the right way for an inquiry, anyway."  
  
"Don't talk like that." The thought of Ron not being an Auror was vaguely frightening. "You're good at what you do. You *like* it, I think, even though Hermione doesn't sometimes."  
  
"I did like it," Ron admitted. "It was... it was the first thing I was ever really good at, you know? But now it's all infighting and office politics and stuff, and you know." Ron stopped so suddenly and absolutely that for a moment Harry thought he was expected to know, or else guess. After a moment, though, Ron continued in a much lower voice that was, if possible, even more subdued. "Hermione and I were, well, thinking of starting a family - y'know, kids and all that - we've wanted to for a long time, but we never will so long as I'm an Auror.   
  
"It's not fair!" Ron burst out in frustration, slamming a hand down on the bed. "It's not fair to bring up a kid with one parent who's never around, or who could die every time they go out to work. Listening to Mum tell old war stories sort of decided that for is, if anything..." His voice trailed off into nothingness, replaced by an acutely uncomfortable moment for Harry, who silently writhed in consternation.  
  
"Ron, you're one of the best Aurors the Ministry has," he said at last. "I can't let you just throw that away because of me - quit, or something. Anything! I don't want to see Fudge try to drag your name through the mud. He's done it with anyone he can pull up for an inquiry - and you know it! You *know* it, Ron. He'll accuse you of all sorts of things, Order of Merlin or not, and you know people will believe him. I'm not worth it."  
  
"If I quit," Ron said slowly, measuring out his words, "you won't be able to see Draco. Period. Fudge will make sure of that. At least I'm in a position where I can try to help you, even if it won't be much - and I can keep Draco alive, which is a lot more than ninety-nine percent of the other Aurors are willing to do. It was your request and only your request that got him sent into exile, Harry. It's the only thing really keeping him alive now - if it wasn't for that, I couldn't do anything."  
  
"Just..." Harry sighed and shut his eyes tightly. "Just don't wreck your career or anything until we can figure something out. I'll take care of it - don't jeopardize yourself."  
  
"Don't you see why *I'm* doing this?" Ron countered swiftly. He had straightened a bit and his somber hazel eyes stared down at Harry from their impressive height. "If you're allowed to be generous, then I am, too - I'm doing this because you deserve to try to find your happiness, for once."  
  
"I..."  
  
"Look, Harry, they'll have Draco under strict watch from now on," Ron told him softly. "I can't promise you anything, but I swear I'll try to get you through to him. I... you've come so far, and I guess Draco has, too - at least, farther than I've given him credit for - and you don't deserve to be shut down like this, especially because Fudge is playing one of his little power games. I'll make it, don't worry."  
  
Tears threatened at the corner of Harry's eyes and his throat tightened to the point where breath was difficult. The canopy above him swam blurrily for a moment before Harry closed his eyes, but not before he could feel twin streams of warm saltwater trickle down the side of his face. /I don't deserve this,/ he thought desperately, trying to get a hold of himself before Ron would tell him he *hated* crying scenes and to cut it out already. /Ron... don't put off your own happiness for mine, because mine will probably never come./  
  
"Bloody hell!" Ron snapped, pushing at Harry's shoulder forcefully. Harry's eyes popped open and he stared at his best friend, who was towering over him in indignation. "I don't need to be a bloody Auror to figure out what's going on in your head - I've only known you for sixteen years." The indignation faded a bit, but Ron's words were no less strong. "You *do* deserve it, Harry, and I should know; we've had years to hash this out, haven't we? And I know you haven't had an easy time of it even when you should have... And I know what's going to happen won't be easy, either, but you deserve all the help you can get. You bloody well *need* it."  
  
"Thank you, Ron," Harry croaked.  
  
"You're welcome," Ron said, plainly relieved by Harry's acceptance and unwilling to pursue serious discussion any further. "I swear, wizards today need manners knocked into them - you have no idea how many tries it took me to get Draco to say 'thank you' for the simplest things. I suppose he's rubbing off on you."  
  
"Oh, and this coming from the man who used the word 'bloody' three times in three sentences?"  
  
"You're going the right way for a smack upside the head, Potter."  
  
* * *  
  
Ron had been right - Dobby was overjoyed to make a special meal for "Harry Potter, sir" and not forty-five minutes later had presented him with a feast-in-miniature finished off by a banana rum bread pudding. Ron had left Harry to enjoy it in solitude, telling him that Hermione had something she needed to speak to him about, although the odd expression on his face had put 'talking' into question. Smiling a bit at Ron's complete transparency and squashing the jealous little voice at the back of his skull, Harry had packed away the last of his bread pudding, considered and rejected writing the promised Ravenclaw test, and fell into bed and into dreams without even bothering to take off his clothes.  
  
Just barely, he had time to think that maybe he should stay awake - he was a habitual insomniac, too distrusting of his dreams to fall asleep easily and not willing to run the risk of taking sleeping medication. That thought had just a moment to form, though, before dreams chased it out of his head.  
  
/I'm home,/ he thought, staring up at the serene old stone wall of his parents' cottage in Godric's Hollow. Everything was just as he remembered it, from the tidy front hedges to the white curtains in the windows, windows opened to let in the breeze and make the curtains dance like ghosts. He opened the gate and walked through it, paced up the stone walk between the gardens and placed his hand tentatively on the handle of the door. /Should I go in?/ he asked himself. /Of course, idiot... it's my house./  
  
He stepped through the front door, turned, and closed it softly behind him. A sigh of familiarity shook his body as he took in the mirrored hallway and the infinite series of reflections of himself that stared back as he looked at them. "Mom?" he called. "Dad? I'm home!"  
  
"Harry!" one of his reflections said happily, striding forward to place its hand on the glass separating them. "How was your day? Did you get all that work done you needed to get done?"  
  
"Almost." Harry yawned and set down his briefcase. "I can finish the rest tomorrow, though - it's just a few more papers, that's all, and then I'll be done. Not a moment too soon, I say; I still need to figure out those essay questions to assign over Christmas break."  
  
"You sound just like Minerva plotting out her classes in the staff room," another reflection said dryly. It reflexively brushed a hand through untidy black hair, revealing the lightning-shaped scar for a brief moment. "I remember sneaking into the staff room with Sirius once just to see what it was the teachers did when they weren't teaching us. It was... enlightening. For example... Hey, Lily, did you know about that birthmark Flitwick has on his -"  
  
"Too much information," Harry moaned, covering his ears. "Hearing about it as a student is bad enough - I don't need to hear about it as a colleague. I'll never be able to look him in the face again."  
  
"Speaking of looking people in the face, Harry," a third reflection said from behind him. Harry turned to face the door, puzzled as to who this person was and where they had come from (/Sirius? Remus? Ron?), but the reflection smiled at him impassively and continued: "You really should stop doing it."  
  
Harry jumped awake with a strangled gasp, his heart pounding. /Oh, Merlin. God. What... what was that?/ The strangeness of his dream hit him full force. Talking with himself, or his reflections rather, in his parents' house - worse, thinking that his reflections *were* his parents and talking to them like they were... He remembered Ron saying something about how talking to oneself was not necessarily a sign of insanity, unless you answered back. /I can't be cracking up,/ he reassured himself. /You can't go crazy if you can tell yourself you're not going crazy. Crazy people aren't supposed to know they're going crazy./ He paused. /You *are* going crazy. Nutters. Certifiably barking mad./  
  
The sheets and comforter had somehow gotten twisted around his legs and it was a struggle for Harry to extricate himself in the dark, mostly because he had left his wand on the table across the room. It took a minute to find it, but the relief was worth the effort as a simple "Lumos" incantation filled the room with light. Familiarity settled him down a little as he took in the room that had quickly grafted itself into his mind, a large and comfortable space with a window overlooking the Quidditch pitch and a large tapestry of lions and griffins worked in gold. His desk, stacked with yet-to-be-graded papers and the beginnings of the Ravenclaw test. /Might as well work,/ he decided. /Then I can pass out and *not* dream./  
  
Stiffly, Harry shuffled over to his desk, purposely trying not to think of the ever-present pain and stiffness in his leg. He fairly collapsed into his chair and pulled the third-year Slytherin papers on Uses of Animate-Inanimate Transfiguration over to him, but didn't really see the writing on the neat scrolls of parchment. They blurred into insignificance and faded out like white noise, and Harry simply *sat.* Hermione had a word for that, when he would zone out, he remembered distantly. She said it whenever Ron did the same - just sat there silently and stared. "Being," she called it. "Just being, for a moment."  
  
Harry stared blindly at the wall in front of him until it too blurred and he ended up gazing off into the middle distance, his mind slipping into a trance characterized by a pleasant sort of floating sensation, as if his body was hovering a few inches above his chair. A gradual warmth stole through him although the only light in the room was from his desk lamp, making his head loll a bit.  
  
/If I hadn't saved you, but you'd still gotten away from our little meeting alive, would you have spoken up for me against the Ministry?/  
  
/Yes... in a heartbeat I would have./ He answered the voice before he was even aware that it had spoken - Draco's voice, from the recess of memory - new, yes, but graven in Harry's consciousness as if his words had been spoken years ago. His answer was not the one given earlier, but it was the first truly felt response from his heart. Not true, not by a mile - his real answer had been one of cold logic, one Draco could understand. But the real answer, held close to him, was that yes... he would have saved Draco. He couldn't live with himself otherwise. /I can't describe it to anyone what it's like to think this about someone I should hate - it's beautiful and terrible and everything in between. I can't think of a life without feeling this way. Honestly./  
  
He felt himself teetering on the edge of sentimentality but told himself fiercely, /Well, I *can't*./ And he couldn't - it was either a very great thing or a horrible thing to admit that he couldn't conceive of his world being His World without Draco Malfoy. How it had come to be like that Harry couldn't say, and he probably never could, only that the path that had taken him through the years from school to confrontation to now had changed him, had transformed Draco from an irritant to a hated object to one of curiosity and reluctant regard... And obligation that night, when Draco had spared his life because as Draco had brokenly told him he *couldn't* kill Harry, in this world or any other.  
  
/I couldn't kill you. I never could./  
  
Was that Draco talking to him? Or was it him, Harry? He shook his head, trying not to get bogged down in his own thoughts - he'd spent enough time in that morass for the past few years. /All I've done is *think*/ he sighed to himself. Except today; he had *done* today, had actually gone out and chased down an answer for himself, and now he held it to him, still uncertain of what to make of it.  
  
/Come back, then. Any time. You're always... that is to say, you're welcome here./  
  
Welcome... He had a sudden picture of Draco standing at a window overlooking the Cumbrian forests. Not with his fingers pressed against the glass, like a man behind prison bars, but simply standing there, looking out. Lifting himself out of his stupor, he shifted a bit to look out his own window, seeing the Quidditch hoops outlined darkly against the starlight.  
  
/Come back, then. Any time./  
  
And that thought was warmth. Harry stood and made his painful way over to his bed, extinguishing his desk lamp with a wave of his wand. Quickly he undressed, pointedly not looking at the twisted fallacy of thigh muscle visible where the boxer shorts didn't cover him, and slid under the covers. He focused on that one thought, played over the nuances of Draco's voice, a voice bereft of sarcasm and deception, holding only pure and honest hope and invitation. He thought it so hard it seemed for a moment that Draco breathed the words in his very ear, warm breath stirring black-and-gray hair ticklishly against his skin.  
  
Harry smiled as he turned over and murmured a reply into his pillow, and fell asleep. 


	2. Chapter Two

+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+  
(Ovid )  
  
CHAPTER TWO  
  
When he woke for the second time, it was to the chattering of his alarm clock, which was reeling off his itinerary for the day. "Don't forget to hand those quizzes back to the Hufflepuffs this morning," the clock instructed as Harry pushed his covers off, half fell out of bed, and stumbled blindly for the shower. "And the Ravenclaw test!" the clock shouted after him. "Don't forget that!"  
  
Although he had managed to get back to sleep and avoid more dreams, Harry found that he couldn't shake off the memory of staring at his own face in that hall of mirrors, *talking* to himself as if he were so many different people. It haunted him through his ritual preparations for the day: shower, shave, dress, frantically compose a single essay question for the fifth-year Ravenclaws (and hope it would take them an hour and a half to answer it.) The interference of the dream kept distracting him from that last, though, and it was a welcome relief when Ron appeared at his door to collect him for breakfast.  
  
"You look a bit peaked," was Ron's helpful observation, made the second Harry opened the door.  
  
"*Thank* you." Harry scrubbed a hand through his hair, immediately destroying two minutes' worth of hard labor with a comb and brush. Ron was looking at him with an expression halfway between curiosity and concern, his face shadowed in the half-light that permeated the castle halls at such an early hour. When Ron's look began to shade toward a mixture of concern and impatience, Harry sighed and said, "Just a weird dream last night. Don't get your panties in a twist."  
  
Ron's gaze sharpened and the hazel eyes flickered reflexively to the scar on Harry's forehead. Harry squirmed under the pressing weight of Ron's scrutiny; it was moments like this that he was reminded forcibly of his friend's chosen occupation. He wondered a bit irrationally if Ron hadn't exchanged one of his eyes for a magic one, as Alastor Moody had done; the intensity in those hazel depths made Harry feel as if Ron were peering directly into his skull. After a few moments of standing stock-still in the hallway, staring at each other, Harry realized Ron wasn't going to let up until he said something to ease his friend's anxiety.  
  
"It wasn't *that* kind of dream," he said at last, a bit irritably. He felt bad for snapping at Ron - for a moment, anyway. /I *deserve* to be irritable. I'm damn well entitled to it./ Ron, though, didn't look chastened, or repentant at the thought of once again using Harry as a Voldemort weather vane, although he did mutter something that sounded like an apology. "It was just another weird dream that *everyone's allowed to have*," Harry added for good measure, glaring at Ron, who shrugged.  
  
"Did it involve sex?"  
  
"No, Ron."  
  
"Damn."  
  
* * *  
  
By the time he got to class, the fifth-year Ravenclaws were staring at him expectantly, quills at the ready and notes and textbooks already tucked neatly underneath their desks. While Harry usually appreciated such promptness (as he rarely got it from the rest of his students, even the Gryffindors), it was a bit disturbing to actually have students *anticipating* a test. Each one of the Ravenclaws was practically quivering with excitement.   
  
/Just like Hermione,/ he thought with a fond, private smile, thinking of his longtime friend and the bizarre energy that overtook her whenever the rest of the class would be slogging through a multiple-choice test in Potions. She'd be bent over her desk, quill flying over her parchment, not even bothering to push out the thick mop of brown hair that inevitably fell in her face.  
  
The memory was so strong that Harry was briefly taken aback. For a moment, he wasn't in his Transfigurations classroom, but in Snape's dungeon-slash-lecture hall, sitting for their sixth-year final exam, and he was glowering at Draco Malfoy across the room and trying to resist the temptation to throw a spitball at him, or something equally disgusting. In his memory, Malfoy turned his head slightly, looking up from his paper enough to catch Harry's eye. They traded furious glares, Malfoy mouthed something nasty enough to get points taken off if Snape had ever heard it (or if Draco were anyone else but a Slytherin), Harry replied in kind, and then they turned back to their respective tests.  
  
"Harry?" A gentle voice sounded out of nowhere, and Harry jumped, wondering which student of his would be so familiar as to address him by his first name. He blinked, staggered a bit when he saw that it was Hermione who'd called him, materializing as if summoned by the memory he'd just played over so clearly a minute ago. Her face, oddly and perpetually young despite the years and all their trials, was concerned. /Ron probably told her about my 'weird dream',/ he thought. He had Ron had ended up discussing it over breakfast.  
  
"Could I borrow you for a minute?" Hermione asked after watching him stew in silence. "I mean, as soon as you're done doing... whatever it is you're doing." There was obviously no tactful way to say that what Harry was doing was staring into space, having his students stare at him.  
  
"Uhhh, yes. Yes, of course. Right away. Hang on a second, Herm - I mean, Dr. Granger." He shook himself out of memory and turned his attention to his students. "I thought I'd shake things up and change our usual multiple-choice and short answer test format." The class buzzed excitedly at that. "You'll have the following hour and... uh, twenty minutes to write on the following: Explain fully each step involved in the transfiguring of humans into animals, including the steps required to become an Animagi, and discuss the ethics involved in such processes, as outlined in Proteus Ovidian's 'Ethics of Metamorphosis.' Finally, construct an argument either for or against human-to-animal transfiguration as a method of espionage as it applies to the Ministry's decision in Black vs. the Wizarding World, 1996."  
  
/*That* should keep them busy,/ he thought smugly. The smugness faded as each of the students exchanged wide grins and bent to their papers, quills moving over them like things possessed. /Wit and learning?/ he thought, remembering his school days of slacking off with a shudder. /That's one thing... this is just unnatural./ He saw that Hermione, former Head Girl and possessor of the highest grade-point average in Hogwarts history, looked a little bit unnerved herself.  
  
"I'll be back in a moment," he told the class, acutely aware that his words were falling on deaf ears. He strode past Hermione and out the door, shutting it behind them as soon as she passed through. The hallway stretched on, long and echoing, and he lowered his voice. "What is it?" he asked. "If it's about that stupid dream, don't bother - I'll skin Ron myself when I see him."  
  
"What dream?" Hermione asked impatiently. "No, Ron asked me to come and tell you something - he couldn't come himself. Ministry business and all that." Her voice was low too, though, and the unnerved expression Harry had perceived earlier was now distinctly strained. "He told me what he's trying to do for you and... and Draco," she said, in a voice that failed to tell Harry whether or not Hermione approved of her husband's actions. "And he also told me that the Ministry was starting to get suspicious - he's got some meeting or other with Fudge right now."  
  
/Oh, God./ Harry prayed his best friend wasn't going to get fired by Fudge - or worse, knowing the paranoiac mind of the Minister of Magic. Thoughts of Azkaban loomed in Harry's mind and he swallowed the sudden rush of fear. But there was fear, too - guilty fear, and Harry tried to banish it - that this meant his chance to talk with Draco again, or ever again for that matter, had vanished. /It can't stop here,/ he thought desperately, thinking of his promise to send Draco an owl. When he'd said that, it had seemed like a little, routine thing, and he hadn't truly been aware of the ramifications of his actions, or any possible impediment to carrying them out. Now he thought of Draco in his exile, alone and slowly crumbling under the weight of it, and saw his offhand offer of correspondence take on a heavier weight than it had before.  
  
"Ron told me to tell you he got an owl arranged to send to Draco," Hermione said quietly, her voice little more than warm breath against Harry's robes. "It's a routine owl that gets sent out there - asking him if he needs anything that the house-elves can't pick up. He has to send it at two today; usually it's the Department of Magical Law higher-ups that see to it, but Ron managed to convince them to let him send it, because he had Auror-related material to send as well and there was no sense in sending two - well, you understand."  
  
/Thank you, Ron./  
  
Aloud, Harry said: "Thanks, Hermione. Could you tell Ron that too?"  
  
Hermione nodded and turned to go. She paused in mid-turn and swung back to face Harry, her face still pale and set. "Ron told me why he's doing this for you," she said in that soft voice Harry remembered from so long ago, the voice that hadn't changed over the years - still comforting despite the determination it could carry. "I can't say that I agree totally, but I haven't seen Malf- Draco since the war, so I only have my old memories of him." Memories of him calling her Mudblood, hearing about how he had rejoiced when she'd been Petrified second year - and there were many more, but even just one would suffice to make every ounce of her hate justified ten times over. "If you're sure... I mean, that is, if you think you can be happy with him, or if there's still things you need to work out, I'll help you any way I can."  
  
There was nothing, really, Harry could say to that. /If you're allowed to be generous, then I am, too - I'm doing this because you deserve to try to find your happiness, for once./ Ron's words from last night. He thought back over the years, wondering how it was that his friends had changed so much, and yet changed so little. /There's a saying for that,/ he told himself. "Thanks, Hermione," he whispered, taking one of her hands in both of his. "If you could, tell Ron for me... tell him not to get himself fired."  
  
"You know Ron," Hermione sighed, her lips twitching up in a smile. "I think he's decided on it already."   
  
There was a slight gleam in her brown eyes at that, and Harry remembered that Ron had mentioned starting a family. The thought of Ron with kids was vaguely disturbing, but not as disturbing as it had been when they'd used to discuss it in school. "Kids? I want kids like I want a hole in the head," Ron had said scornfully. It was an opinion Harry had shared without reservation. Now, though... the thought of settling down with someone (Draco) was deeply appealing.  
  
"What will he do?" Harry asked. He glanced at his watch, wondering if the Ravenclaws had finished the test yet or not. Eight minutes... they'd be mostly done, except for the really ambitious ones, or Peter Borges, who had a memory like an encyclopedia and could quote pages - and page numbers - from memory. "I don't really know what the career options are for ex-Aurors. Well, there's always the Defense Against Dark Arts class, but I'd always thought Ron would put his own eyes out before teaching."  
  
"I told him he should write a book." An honest smile brightened Hermione's face. "Really, the memoirs of one of the world's youngest recipients of the Order of Merlin, a tactical wizard (pardon the pun)... It would be a bestseller. He could even put in stuff about killing werewolves and ridding villages of vampires."  
  
"And put his hair in curlers, too, and buy lilac robes."  
  
"And quote chapter and verse from his book on a regular basis."  
  
"You do know that if Ron ever suspected we were entertaining notions of him ending up like Gilderoy Lockhart he would hex us both into the next dimension," Harry said through his laughter.  
  
"No, he would hex *you*," Hermione corrected, grinning now. "I'm his wife - he wouldn't *dare* hex me. And anyway, he's gotten a bit slow in his old age - I'd have him in a Full-Body Bind before he could even blink."  
  
"What's this?" Ron's voice boomed down the hallway like thunder, startling Harry and Hermione both. "'Full-Body Bind? That sounds sort of kinky, 'Mione - I don't think Harry wants to hear about stuff like that." Soundlessly, Ron swept up to stand behind Hermione, who twisted around to glare at him. He fairly towered above his petite wife, lanky where she was softly rounded, bright and flashing where she was subdued. His long arms wrapped effortlessly around her shoulders in a gesture that made Harry's heart twinge a bit with sadness and not a bit of jealousy.   
  
/But even if you did have someone to do that to,/ a little voice said from the back of Harry's head, somewhere near the base of his skull, /would you have the guts to do it? Here you are, twenty-seven and never been kissed. Never even held *hands* with a real, honest-to-God boyfriend./ The voice paused. /That you're gay is bad enough, but to not even have a *relationship*... that's just pathetic./  
  
Harry blocked the voice out as best he could. It had started up around sixth year, when he'd finally realized he could never, ever in a million years like Ginny the way she wanted him to (and she had probably been better off with Colin Creevey, anyway, before she... no, he wasn't going there...), and it had never shut up. Even after Ron had assured him that it made no difference to him - "I'm not your dick's best friend, I'm *yours*," had been his precise words - the voice never really went away. It had gotten louder as the years passed, and now two years into peacetime when people had finally begun to pair off and settle down, it had reached fever pitch.  
  
"I was just telling Harry," Hermione was saying now, "about your plan - you know, the owl. Is that still a go?" Her voice sharpened with worry. "What did Fudge say?"  
  
"The usual," Ron said dismissively, rocking back and forth a bit so that Hermione swayed with him. "He gave me the usual lecture on my vows as an Auror - I told him I wasn't married to the Ministry because I already have a wife and bigamy is illegal, but he didn't seem to get it - and said I should shape up before I came under review for suspicious activities." He paused. "I really wanted to tell him off, but I told him I'd do my best. It was just typical Fudge ranting, 'Mione. Don't worry about it."  
  
"I *do* worry," Hermione grunted. "I'm your wife. It's my *right* to worry."  
  
"Anyway," Ron said loudly before his voice dropped back down to a discreet whisper. "It is, Harry. I need the letter a little early, though - I think one o'clock should do it. Fudge is probably going to screen mail from me at this point - owls going out to former Death Eaters are automatically redirected to the Ministry - so I'll need to do some charm work on your letter before I post it." His expression was serious, but there was a glint of the old Ron Weasley in those gold-hazel eyes that said sneaking stuff past Fudge was more fun than anything else. And if he got caught... well, so what?  
  
"One o'clock it is," Harry agreed. He looked at his watch again and sighed. "I need to get back to class, you two. And thanks, Ron, Hermione. Thank you for everything."  
  
"Don't mention it," they said simultaneously. They exchanged a look that Harry usually associated with sloppy married couples like Ginny and Colin, not his sensible best friends. Not really wanting to see what would happen next, he opened the door back into his classroom and ducked through, shutting it just as he thought he saw Ron lean in for a kiss. When he turned back around, some of the Ravenclaws were looking at him expectantly - most of them were, except for Peter Borges, who was still writing furiously.  
  
"You're *done*?" Harry asked, hoping his voice didn't sound as strangled as he thought it did.  
  
"We are, sir," Jennifer Arendt informed him. "Unless..." Fear creased her face for a moment. "Did you want us to quote precedents from the Black case or not? I wasn't clear on that."  
  
"Yes! Precedent, by all means!" Harry said a bit wildly.  
  
A collective gasp ran through the Ravenclaws and one - Robert Delaney, Harry thought - moaned, "I can't believe I forgot about Ministry precedent!" As one, twenty or so heads bent down to their papers and once again the quills were off, racing across parchments like lightning. Harry sighed as he limped up to his desk, figuring that would give him another ten minutes or so, maybe more if the students remembered things they had left out of their essays. Enough time, maybe, to start figuring out what he wanted to write to Draco. He picked up quill and parchment of his own, hitched himself forward in his chair, and began to think.  
  
'Draco.' /Good start,/ he congratulated himself. He wrote that down.  
  
'It was good talking to you again. I'm sorry about the whole Invisibility Cloak thing, but I have to say that it was all for the best. Ron is sending this by Ministry owl on Auror business' - /You're stating the obvious, Potter./ - 'so I'm sorry if this brief, and I've never been much for writing the important stuff.'  
  
Harry paused, rolling his quill back and forth between thumb and index finger. What *did* he want to say? What was so important? He felt the heavy weight of memory pressing down on him, the difficulty of that short time spent trying to get Draco to open up, and to open himself as well. There had been so much he had never even been able to really admit to himself; telling Draco about the slow shift in his feelings had been a revelation as much for him as it had been for the other. /I never really knew how I felt about you until I saw you again,/ he thought, staring blankly at the few lines on his parchment, wondering if he should dare write that down. /I've had years and years to try to figure that out, but I couldn't manage it until yesterday./  
  
Taking a deep breath, telling himself he could rip up the letter if it ended up being stupid, Harry wrote those very thoughts down. It was odd, looking at the words upon the page, as if they were somehow different than the thoughts behind them. But they were the same, verbatim. He sighed, dipped his quill in the ink again, and thought some more. /I've decided I need to see you again, although I don't know how that will happen. Ron says - / He paused in his own thought. Draco knew Ron was involved, but this seemed like... He didn't know how Draco would react to hearing Ron's offer of help; Harry wasn't able to fully comprehend what kind of agreement Ron and Draco had reached during Draco's brief stint at Hogwarts.  
  
'I've decided I need to see you again, although I don't know how that will happen. Still, I know something will work out sooner or later, at least on my end. I'll let you know when something does. But for now, I just wanted to say thank you for talking to me.'  
  
He paused, scratched out the 'to', and supplied 'with' in its place. That sounded better.  
  
'And I hope I can see you soon.'  
  
That would probably be the extent of it. Harry frowned at his quill, wishing he could blame it for his inability to clearly articulate his feelings. /What would I *write*, though?/ he asked himself. He couldn't write a long, sloppy love confessional - nor would he if he could - and had no desire to rehash everything that had happened between them, whether in the distant or more recent past. What else was there to say? Not much.  
  
'Harry.'  
  
At least there was that. Harry sighed and stared critically at the short missive, hoping that maybe Draco would be able to read between the lines and see what Harry was incapable of writing, hearing what Harry could not say. /If anyone would understand, though, it'd be Draco, wouldn't it?/ Harry was briefly disheartened by the thought of two people with a world of things to say not being able to say them, and he being one of those two people in question. But that was the way of it, wasn't it? The war hadn't allowed close friendships to form, even with people he'd known since school - why bother with the effort, when one person might very well die? He had stayed close with Ron and Hermione as much as their separate duties had allowed, but those eight years had stretched them in some way, and he hadn't found anyone quite like them, hadn't cared to try.  
  
Now, spat back out into peacetime, things felt like they were going by as if he were flying full-tilt on his Firebolt. Ron and Hermione were thinking of kids. The students he'd been teaching for the past two years had grown up, with younger students to take their places. People came and went, some of whom he thought 'Maybe... maybe there could be something there', but when the moment came, he was left floundering and absolutely clueless. He knew how to interrogate a Death Eater, but not how to talk to another human being about his day, or how to ask him out - not that he was in a position where available single men drifted through on a regular basis. No... Now he was surrounded by people he counted as friends in the strange sort of professional sense. He liked McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout, and the rest of the professors, but in the back of his mind there was always the nagging knowledge that these people were, first and foremost, the people who had lectured him until his brains dripped out his ears and given him detentions. It was still an effort to call them by their first names and not 'Professor.'  
  
Despite this never-ending sameness, things whirled on and still he was Famous Harry Potter - wonderful Potter with his *scar* and his *broomstick*... The only people who didn't think of him That Way were his two best friends, and they were married.  
  
And Draco. He hoped for that very, very much. /Oh, how I hope./  
  
Mechanically, he folded up the letter and sealed it shut with wax drippings from his candle, using his personal seal - an owl and three stars - instead of leaving a plain white blob congealing on the paper. He stared at the folded square for a moment before tucking it into the pocket of his robe and looking up to see that the Ravenclaws, once again, had finished - with the exception, of course, of Peter, who was still writing furiously in the back. After a few more minutes, he sat back with satisfied sigh and dropped his quill on his desk with an air of finality.  
  
Harry wished he could be that confident.  
  
* * *  
  
By a little clever maneuvering at lunch, Harry managed to slip his letter to Ron, who made it vanish into his robes like a stage magician, complete with dramatic flourish. It attracted the attention of Minerva, who eyed Ron dubiously - she was plainly wondering why an Auror and his wife were continuing to stay on at Hogwarts after the reason for their being there had left to go back into exile. Harry was wondering that himself, and so it was with some curiosity - and reluctance - that he collared Ron on his way out of the Great Hall.  
  
"Ron, it's not that I don't like having you around, but I would have thought you'd be back in London by now," he said in the best casual 'I'm not fishing for information' tone he could manage under the circumstances. The circumstances were the combination of the not-fooled-in-the-least expression Ron wore, and the faint tinge of sadness in his friend's eyes.  
  
"To be honest, it's sort of like a vacation," Ron said ruefully, reaching out a hand to run long fingers down the stone wall as they walked. They skimmed delicately over a tapestry, over the frame and canvas of a painting - the corseted Victorian woman in it shrieked in indignation - danced along a doorframe. "I mean, why'd you come back when the Ministry was drooling to have you work for them?"  
  
"I don't know," Harry mumbled. "Minerva needed someone for the Transfigurations class... and well, I guess this place was always my first home, in a way. And when the war started I always thought about how things here used to be. Even with Sirius and the Tournament and Voldemort and all... It was a place I could feel safe for a bit."  
  
"You got it in one," Ron said. He touched Harry lightly on the shoulder, said, "I need to get going - I have to get this owl ready before Fudge has a coronary", and sped up his steps so he flowed ahead of Harry like a tall, black-draped ghost. Harry stopped outside the door to his classroom and watched Ron walk ahead of him, noticing for the first time the slight depression about his friend's shoulders that bespoke a heavy, pressing weight, and he sighed, recognizing that weight, because he carried it himself.  
  
He opened the door on his seventh-year double class with the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins, smiling slightly at them. This was not his favorite class; even after thirteen years, tension between the two houses had risen to proportions nearly matching that Slytherin shared with Gryffindor. It had started, along with the rest of the war, with Cedric Diggory's death in Harry's fourth year and the fallout resulting from that. The Hufflepuffs nowadays harbored an animosity toward Slytherin that probably would have upset even-tempered, honest Cedric, if he had been alive to see it. Patience had all but disappeared as a byword in their House description; 'patient Hufflepuff' had almost become a contradiction in terms, at least when it came to dealing with Slytherin insults, while 'loyal' was an understatement for what had transformed into something approaching fanatical devotion for their House on the part of each Hufflepuff. When Harry had seen that he would have two Slytherin/Hufflepuff classes a week, he had gone immediately to Minerva, who had dismissed him with atypical irritation.  
  
"They'll have to learn to get over it," she had snapped. "And you'll have to manage them, *Professor* Potter."  
  
And he had managed, after a fashion. At least, there weren't any transfigured students or furious faces greeting him today, although Holly Ferrars and Elizabeth Sloane (Hufflepuff and Slytherin, respectively) were glaring daggers at each other. Their gazes snapped to him when he coughed a bit to announce his presence, and Holly had the grace to look abashed. /They're seventh year,/ Harry thought, cursorily inspecting the room. /They should be past this petty arguing./ They *should*, he amended, but they, unlike him, didn't have the benefit of hindsight. So much of Harry's life would have been easier if he, and a few other people, had been able to put House rivalries aside with Slytherin and get things done. As it was, though, many in that house had been alienated and refused to provide the Ministry with help in during the war, or the chaos after it.  
  
Fudge had wanted to prosecute them alongside the out-and-out Death Eaters, and had even gone so far as to try to get an extradition order passed through the United States Congress of Supernatural Arts to get Millicent Bulstrode out of her self-imposed exile in Wyoming. She had been one of the best Charms students and an expert in Obliviation, and according to Fudge, she could have provided the Ministry with an invaluable service in the war. Spokesman Charles Stonewall had refused Fudge's request absolutely. As far as Harry knew, Millicent was still out on the range somewhere. He hoped she was happy.  
  
"I believe you all have homework to turn in?" he asked a bit peremptorily. Usually a sharp, nearly-snarky tone worked best with this particular class, which had had six years to stew in its collective dislike, and Harry had found that keeping the students worried about *him* kept them from going at each others' throats. There was a low rumble of muttering at his words and a shuffle of briefcases and books as the students got out their scrolls and passed them forward. They must have sensed something exuding from Harry that told them not to anger their teacher - Harry wished he knew what it was they sensed, so he could exude it more often. As he shuffled scrolls around, he automatically launched into his lecture, sending the class diving for parchment and quills.  
  
He had his lecture on Ministry laws governing Animagi virtually memorized. McGonagall had pounded it into his head when he had been learning, and he could quote it very nearly in his sleep. His mouth moved more or less independently of his mind, which circled distractedly elsewhere, ruminating over the fact that Ron would probably be charming his letter right now. /Would he read it?/ his mind wondered anxiously. Not that there were any passionate outpourings in it, but still... When would Draco get it? What if Fudge found out? What if *Fudge* read it? His stomach froze for a second before doing a hideous little somersault inside him.  
  
For a single moment, Harry was acutely aware that he had stopped talking, but the importance of that faded as he tried to decide whether or not to run in search of Ron and tell him not to send that letter after all. /No,/ he told himself sternly. The students were staring at him worriedly, mouths slightly agape. /No... nothing gets done if you're too afraid to do it./ That thought helped a little. /And Fudge finds out... well, I'll deal with it. I've dealt with everything. Fudge won't be that much different./  
  
"I'm sorry," he said to the students, smiling slightly, "I seem to have drifted off. Where was I?"  
  
"The first Registration Code for Animagi," Holly Ferrars volunteered, a split second before Elizabeth Sloane could present that same information. The two girls glared mortal death at each other.  
  
"Ah, yes. Thank you. Now, the first Registration Codes specified only that an individual who had become an Animagus be reported, but subsequent codes were modified to include prospective trainees and also to require more specific information as to identification..." Harry fell into the lecture again, so fully that he didn't think of the letter until the end of class - and by then it was after two o' clock, and if Ron was running on time, the owl would be on its way to the Ministry even as a new well of fear surged up in Harry's gut.  
  
He shepherded the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins out of the classroom, watching closely to make sure they weren't going to drop the uneasy truce they adopted for his classes in favor of sudden hostilities. Fortunately, they moved off in two separate, silent groups, leaving him alone in the hallway. As the last Hufflepuff turned the far corner, Harry let himself collapsed back against the wall. /That was an ordeal,/ he thought, unsure whether he was thinking of the class or sending the letter. Probably both things, he decided, forcing his body upright again. His leg was aching a little and he needed to sit down... and he needed to think some more, which was frightening.  
  
So, Harry made his way back to his office, where he ended up hiding out for his one free period of the day, and where Ron found him, clutching a cup of tea that had gone cold. When he tried to explain himself, Ron told him not to worry about it, and told him in such a way that made Harry think Ron was also talking about the letter and was wanting to let him know, in an unexpectedly tactful way, that everything had gone smoothly. 


	3. Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE  
  
+Mens mea cupit canare formas versas in nova corpora.+  
(Ovid)  
  
A few days passed in a blur of meaninglessness, unless one counted Heather Perkins, a sixth-year Gryffindor, placing the Thereoncewas Hex on a hapless Slytherin fourth-year. That meant Kyle St.-Pierre had spent nearly ten minutes speaking in limericks until Professor Sprout, who had been on her way to speak to McGonagall about something, happened by and managed to perform the counter-curse.  
  
"I'm amazed I even remembered it," she told Harry later while he had been grading papers in the staff room. "The last time I remember anyone using it was in *my* sixth year - not that that was very long ago," she added defensively, glaring at him from under her gray cap of flyaway hair, "but still - a very obscure curse! A good thing, too; I think the only limericks St.-Pierre knew were the dirty ones, and the first-years were there and all! For example, 'There once was a girl from West Riding - '"  
  
"Thank you! Er, I get the picture," Harry had said, scuttling away before Sprout could get any further in her recitation. /Oh, God... thank you for sparing me./ Unfortunately, that meant he spent the rest of the day wondering what could possibly rhyme with 'Riding', and what the rest of the limerick might be. Ron, of course, knew - and delivered an impressive oration at dinner that night.  
  
"-so that's what the damn girl's been hiding!" he had finished triumphantly to applause from Professor Florescu, the Potions teacher, and a dirty look from Hermione.  
  
/Brings back stuff,/ he'd thought fondly, heading back to his from dinner. Ron used to drive Hermione up the wall with stuff like that... he still did. Her reaction was still the same: bright-faced irritation and a lecture, even at twenty-seven and at the point where it became clear the part of Ron that was immature and loved dirty jokes would never change.  
  
The limerick waltzed through his head for the rest of the night.  
  
Now, two days later, the distraction of Kyle St.-Pierre's hexing had faded from general school gossip currents (mostly due to McGonagall's threat of summary detention for anyone caught reciting "There once was a girl from West Riding," which had become something of a sensation), and things had settled down to the point of mid-semester monotony. Harry found himself having to work on concentrating in his lectures, and several times had to resist the temptations to have the students do work from their textbooks (or dismiss them altogether) so he could have more time to worry over whether Draco had gotten his letter or not - and, if he had, what his reaction was. /And what about return mail?/ That was guaranteed to be gone over with a fine-tooth comb, by Fudge personally. Harry had never liked the man much, but prior dislike was rapidly starting to transform into intolerance.  
  
On the third evening after his sending the letter out, Harry had learned - through Sinistra of all people - that Ron and Hermione were planning on leaving the next day. Surprised and a little hurt that Ron hadn't told him straight away, Harry made his way to the guest quarters on the other side of the faculty wing to take his friend to task. He went, he had to admit, out of a couple other ulterior motives: one, he wanted to find out if Ron knew anything about Draco getting his letter and two, he was hoping desperately to distract himself from the gnawing anxiety that had fastened itself on his stomach.  
  
He knocked at the door to Ron and Hermione's room and, upon not receiving an answer, called "Ron! Hermione! Are you decent? It's... it's Harry!" When there was no answer to that either, he tried the door handle and was a bit surprised to find that the door was unlocked. /It's probably not a good idea to walk into an Auror's room uninvited,/ a little voice said. The voice was probably right, but Ron wouldn't leave his door unlocked if there was something important going on, or something classified that Harry wasn't supposed to know about.  
  
Carefully, he opened the door a crack and peered into the room, hoping he wasn't about to get hit with a Stunning Spell, or something worse.  
  
There was no one in the master suite. Harry was more than a bit curious now, so he stepped through the door and into the room fully, ignoring the little voice that was now steadily protesting at invading Ron and Hermione's privacy like this. He took a few shuffling, reluctant steps and was debating whether to call Ron again or to just turn around and leave when a voice said, seemingly from nowhere:  
  
"Hey! Whaddaya want?"  
  
Trying to push his heart back down into his stomach was difficult, especially considering he was looking around wildly for the owner of the unfamiliar voice. Harry fumbled for his wand and the voice, upon seeing this, said, "If you pull that, there's gonna be something nasty waiting for you, make no mistake."  
  
"No!" Harry said to his invisible watchman. "No... I'm Harry Potter. I'm a friend."  
  
"Oh! Well, that's different. Still, I'd keep that wand right where it is, if I were you." There was a clattering sound off to Harry's left, and he turned to try to localize it. Absurdly, the voice was coming from a corner table, upon which was placed a very familiar and very battered chess set, a chess set Harry must have played with a thousand times. He'd lost almost as many times - he'd only managed to beat Ron twice in all his memory, and once had been when Ron was high on painkillers taken for a broken arm in Quidditch and kept missing each piece the first time he'd tried to pick one up. Still, the set had never done this in Harry's memory, and he watched amazed as the black knight detached itself from the neat rank and file of his compatriots, spurring his horse to the corner of the board nearest Harry.  
  
"Is Ron in?" Harry asked.  
  
"The boss is busy," the knight told him, jerking his tiny ebony head in the direction of the suite's office door, which was closed. "He has important business to take care of - you can come back later."  
  
"I'll wait," Harry told the knight, who bristled irritably.  
  
"He's got important *private* business to take care of," the knight clarified with a scowl, "and you're not waiting. Don't make me come over there." The oddly tiny voice was deep and threatening, and almost ridiculous coming from a battered chess piece. Looking more closely, Harry saw that the horse's left ear was chipped and the tip of the knight's spear was broken off. "Well?" the knight said, "aren't you leaving?"  
  
"I need to talk to Ron," Harry told the knight, feeling a bit ridiculous for arguing with a tiny animate chess piece. When he had played with Ron's set, the pieces had gradually started to try and escape, or plead with Ron not to let Harry use them. Given that, the knight's sudden assertiveness was a little off-putting. "Look, it's not a big deal, is it? I'll just wait right here."  
  
"I don't think so," the knight said, jerking a bit on his horse's reins. The charger tossed its head and sidestepped, its tiny hooves clattering on the wooden chessboard. With a cry, the knight spurred the horse off the chessboard. The horse took one stride, gathered itself, and leapt off the side of the table.  
  
One wild second later, Harry was trying not to be run down by the full-sized charger stomping and snorting in front of him. The horse rolled its eyes at him, shifting from massive hoof to massive hoof restlessly and pulling at the bit. Its rider, likewise fully armored and wielding a long and threatening - and very sharp - pike, glared at Harry through the slit in his visor and said with utter, frosty calm, "I told you, the boss is busy."  
  
The pike dropped a bit, so the point was near level with Harry's nose.  
  
Harry wondered if the chess piece remembered him and was holding a grudge.  
  
"Dinadan!"  
  
Ron's voice rang loudly in the tense silence, nearly making Harry faint with either relief or alarm - he'd been so distracted that he hadn't heard Ron's office door open and close, or Ron's footsteps coming up behind him. The knight jumped a bit in his saddle and the horse agitatedly tossed its head, liberally spraying Harry's face with foamy saliva. It was an effort to turn away from the knight, who still looked like he wanted to skewer the impertinent wizard, but Harry managed it - and wanted to turn right back around and *be* skewered. The look on Ron's face was not pleasant, sharper than the pike and twice as threatening.  
  
"If you don't mind, get back to your station." It took a moment for Harry to realize Ron was talking to the knight not to him, and in that moment the knight saluted smartly, twitched his charger's reins, and vanished in a brief, muted thunderclap. Only a small chess piece remained on the floor, crudely carved and battered with much use. Ron picked it up carefully in the palm of his hand and restored it to the empty square where it had come from, and once again, the chess set was just... a chess set.  
  
But Ron was not Just Ron when he turned to face Harry. His skin was pale beneath his freckles and the customary light in his hazel eyes was not there. No, it was hooded and cloaked, shuttered - gone, almost, but there was a little anger that prevented them from being completely lifeless. Feeling like a child again, or a very low species of flobberworm, Harry pulled his glasses off his nose and began to clean them, acutely aware of Ron staring at him. The fact that Ron was now little more than a pale, vaguely reddish blur did not lessen the sheer, disapproving force of Ron's presence.  
  
"What are you doing here?" The words were low, strained, and suspicious.  
  
"I needed to ask you something," Harry said in a small, uncertain voice. "I'm sorry if I was intruding on anything important... Or classified. Or whatever."  
  
"Hm?" Ron glanced at him, and the suspicion lessened a little, but it was replaced by a distant sort of emotion Harry had trouble identifying. Was it sadness? It had been a long time since Ron had looked this way... and Harry could remember it. It had been when the blood from the final battle had dried and the dead were buried, the last time Harry saw Ron looking as he was looking now, worn out and old beyond centuries. "No," Ron continued softly, interrupting Harry's train of thought, "it's nothing important - I just needed to get a few things cleared up."  
  
Sensing that Ron was being half-truthful at best, but unable to confirm it, Harry didn't pursue the matter. Instead, he hovered awkwardly for a few minutes, trying to decide between asking after his letter or simply fleeing. He hadn't reached a decision by the time Ron mercifully rescued him and asked the question for him:  
  
"You were going to ask about your letter to Draco, weren't you?"  
  
Harry nodded mutely. Although Ron vigorously denied it, Harry had always suspected there was a touch of the Seer about his friend - or else (and this thought was strangely not as comforting as it should have been) Ron knew him so well that Harry had absolutely no hope of ever entertaining a private thought in Ron's presence. There had been times when Ron had told him more or less what he'd been thinking, or how he'd been feeling, and it had been those times when Harry wondered why *he'd* never been able to read Ron that way. Something... always something had been kept back behind the plastic, passionate mask of Ron's face, a mask Harry had never been able to penetrate, and a mask Ron never really let him through.  
  
It hurt a bit, thinking about that. /Let me in Ron... quit trying to take care of me./ There were times when Ron's mask of choice was frighteningly paternal.  
  
"I don't think Fudge broke the charms on it," Ron said finally, with nowhere near the amount of victory in his voice Harry felt he should have had.  
  
But then, Harry didn't feel victorious at all. The night before, he'd been trying to convince himself that doing an end-run around Fudge was like getting away with booby-trapping Crabbe and Goyle's cauldron during Potions while they were in school. Replacing Snape's scowling countenance with Fudge's impotent, wax-jacketed face hadn't been very difficult, but the exercise hadn't yielded much in the way of satisfaction; instead, it had set a slow, acidic burn in Harry's stomach that had yet to disappear.  
  
"Maybe... you don't think he's holding it?" Harry asked. "He might not have been able to break the charms himself. Were you talking to him just now? I know you have a fireplace in your office." He became acutely aware that he was beginning to gabble and made himself shut up.  
  
"I wasn't talking to him," Ron said quickly, turning away. He sat down heavily in a chair pulled up to the table holding the chess set and gestured for Harry to take a seat. Somewhat uncertainly, Harry did. "And anyway, Fudge isn't the kind of person to hold onto evidence that could possibly incriminate someone in dealings with the Dark Arts - no, he'll have that person hauled in for trial the second he got his hands on the smallest scrap of evidence. Believe me, if he found out you were writing to Draco, and that I was helping you, we'd both be in the interrogation cells in Azkaban right about now."  
  
"You haven't gotten a reply, have you?"  
  
Ron shook his head. "To be honest, I don't expect we'll get one. The Ministry is strict with incoming mail to the Death Eaters in exile - they're much worse with the outgoing. Everything Draco sends out is checked over for *anything* -- charms, magic ink, code words. I expect Draco knows this, and I don't know if he'd been keen on having the Department of Internal Affairs you and he are pen-friends. The department probably wouldn't be very happy about it, themselves. I told him to write me if and when he wanted to... but I'm not holding out hope. And I'm guessing you heard that part of our conversation anyway."  
  
Harry stared at Ron across the table. How many times had they sat like this? Ron, as usual, was staring fixedly at the chess pieces, as if they offered him answers to the questions he couldn't answer. Maybe they did. But questions like these, though - where were the answers for such things? Harry didn't know. *He* certainly didn't have them.  
  
"Could I see him?"  
  
"I'll see what I can do," Ron said softly. His hand had stolen up to his chest and was absently rubbing at the skin over his heart, and his gaze had become preoccupied, turned inward, his eyes staring through the chess pieces without actually seeing them. "There are a couple people in the department who owe me favors... They'll look the other way if I ask them to."  
  
"Are you having second thoughts?" Harry asked. He found himself leaning forward, his entire body attenuated to Ron's, searching wildly for any way to anticipate Ron's response. All he got was that distressing blankness, the expression of almost-resignation on his best friend's face. Some treacherous part of him prayed that it wouldn't be so. /You promised!/ it told Ron accusingly. /You promised you'd help me out!/ What Harry said aloud, though, was: "If you are, it's... well, I mean, it's your *right*. I don't want you to get fired."  
  
"I already told you I don't *care* about getting fired," Ron said, sounding almost petulant. Harry thought guiltily that Ron had picked up on his internal monologue and was - quite rightfully - being resentful. "At least," Ron continued, "it doesn't seem like a big deal right now. No... it's just something else I need to take care of. Don't worry about it - I'll figure out a way." He favored Harry with an unexpectedly shrewd look. "And don't worry about me, either, for that matter."  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. "I'm *supposed* to worry about you, idiot."  
  
"Don't let Draco know that," Ron advised him with an evil smirk and was, suddenly, truly himself again. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got things to take care of - big, important Auror Things, don't you know."  
  
"Yes, sir, your Aurorness," Harry muttered, sensing that Ron was doing little more than diverting him. /Not worry about him, my ass,/ he thought to himself as Ron saw him to and practically propelled him out the door. /Who does he think he is?/  
  
The answer was two-pronged: Ron was an Auror, and Ron was his best friend. A combination of the two meant that Ron would do whatever he felt would be best for Harry, no questions asked - or tolerated, for that matter. It was occasionally endearing. Mostly, it was annoying. Right now, it was troubling; Ron was hiding something, and Harry had *that* pleasant thought to gnaw on for the rest of the day and into the night. He was still chewing on it when he woke up in the morning, and that the question - unsatisfying as it was - had left no room for breakfast.  
  
Ron and Hermione left shortly after the students dispersed for first period. Harry saw his friends down to Hogsmeade, shadowing their coach in his hawk form and trying to think of flying instead of the unhappy clench in his stomach as he watched them Apparate back to their home in London. He drifted in idle circles, coasting the air currents, for a couple hours - he had a free class that morning, and he was determined to not spend it grading papers - before reluctantly heading back to the school.  
  
For the first time in a long time, he didn't feel the usual rush of warmth and happiness that came over him whenever he saw the castle. From his earliest memories of the place, even from his first days at Hogwarts, the castle had been his home more truly than Privet Drive had ever been. The Burrow had been his ideal home, the Weasleys his ideal family for all their problems, but Hogwarts... It had been the first place he'd been able to eat without worrying about Dudley stealing his food, or do anything without fear of being locked up. For all its danger - and Draco, who had been the thorn in Harry's adolescent side - it had been the first place he could call his own.  
  
/No wonder you're back here,/ he thought as he flew in through his open window. The stuffiness of his bedroom closed uncomfortably around him, abrasive against the memory of the cold wind smoothing through his feathers. He transformed back, straightening his robes and gazing about himself in a sudden wave of self-disgust. Everything was so... so ordinary. A bed, desk, the occasional decoration.   
  
Ordinary.  
  
/Isn't this what you want, Potter?/ he asked himself. /Ordinary? That's all you ever wanted before. There was a time when you would have given your right hand to have ordinary./  
  
/Well, now you have it, and you don't bloody know what to do with it./  
  
/Ron and Hermione have ordinary. They have a family. What do you have? Some freakish... freakish *thing* about an old enemy. And you don't even know how you feel about *that*. Be glad you have ordinary, Potter - it's the only thing you'll ever have./  
  
/Draco./  
  
Once again, Harry could see him standing in the window of his bedroom. Such an... ordinary bedroom. /That word is getting a lot of mileage./ In former days he would have thought Draco to have decorated his bedroom with Muggle body parts, chains, and posters of heroic Death Eaters of years past. What he had seen, though, had been...  
  
It had been ordinary.  
  
A bed, desk, the occasional decoration.  
  
The man standing within it, gray eyes watery in the unfocused morning light, body tense with unspoken words, ordinary. Harry had seen the terror in his eyes just before he'd revealed himself - an ordinary man, reacting in the fear of the moment. /And you followed him,/ he added. /You saw what happened to him when Ron went away./  
  
He'd been in awe of the splendor of the Malfoy manse - marble everywhere, gold and gilt dancing at the corner of his vision. Statues of ancestors and paintings with condescending sneers, talking silently. The thick rugs on the floor had muffled his footsteps, the mahogany of the banisters had slid under his fingertips like silk. Everywhere there was money, even after what the Ministry had taken away by way of "reparation", money and beautiful things.  
  
And in the middle of all of it had been Draco, walking slowly, ordinary.  
  
/But what you feel for him.../ Harry paused in his own thought. /What I feel for him - it isn't./  
  
/What do I feel for him?/ That was another snarling question.  
  
Shaking his head, Harry tore himself from his thoughts and made himself concentrate on the simple procedure of picking up his briefcase and heading out his door, resolved to finish grading the last quiz he'd handed out to the second-year Gryffindors. He followed through on that resolution, and by the time he finished writing the grade on "Zamuner, Aileen's" scroll, it was nearly time for class and he'd managed to forget much of the uncertainty of the morning. And even Draco to some extent.  
  
He gave his lecture to his second-year Gryffindors with all the spirit they'd usually expected of him and tolerated their half-transfigured beetles (which were supposed to be buttons) with good grace, although Emory Price's button still had its legs and tried to scuttle up the sleeve of Lisa O'Malley's robe when Emory let his attention wander.  
  
"GET IT OFF!" Lisa shrieked, flailing her arms wildly.  
  
The beetle-slash-button flew through the air like a missile, straight into the right lens of Harrison Glover's glasses.  
  
Harrison's shriek was nearly as high as Lisa's. He toppled over backwards, his head narrowly missing the edge of the table behind him. As he lay too stunned to do anything more than stare blindly up at the ceiling, the beetle made its bid for freedom and streaked off into the confused milling of the students. As carefully as possible, Harry pushed his way through the second-years, overhearing Emory's lament that he had *almost* gotten it right - he sounded much more grief-stricken over the loss of his nearly-successful beetle than worried over whether or not Harrison had a concussion - and hovered over Harrison, who was rubbing his head and staring about owlishly.  
  
Just as Harry was beginning to entertain thoughts of fetching Madam Pomfrey, Harrison blinked and came out of his daze. The children heaved a collective sigh of relief, although Emory still continued to loudly lament the loss of his beetle. Before Harry could shepherd the students back to their desks, the bell rang and there was the traditional wild stampede to get out of the room before he could assign homework - which he did anyway, over the scuffling of shoes and chairs on the floor.  
  
Smiling a bit at the response, one of which he never tired, Harry followed the students out of the hallway and saw them off to lunch. The last thing he heard before the whole herd of them turned the corner to the Great Hall was Emory saying, "I *can't* believe he got away..."  
  
It was so routine - responding to a series of near-disasters - Harry was in some danger of feeling that things had gotten back to normal. So it came as a shock, then, when he saw a small, swiftly moving missile heading down the hall straight for him. He tried to duck, but by the time he registered the menace it was too late to even duck.  
  
Pig collided with Harry's head and bounced off, hooting like a thing possessed. Harry managed to catch the miniscule owl before he hit the floor, and hung on despite Pig's best efforts to wriggle free. The owl was hooting shrilly, drawing curious looks from passing students, and a slightly suspicious one from Minerva, who thankfully restricted her comments to a sniff - she probably knew what all this was about, Harry thought sulkily - and continued on her way. Whispering heartfelt commands for Pig to shut up, Harry tried to get a firm hold on Pig's body with one hand while untying the scrap of parchment from his leg with the other. It wasn't easy, as Pig seemed to think this was some sort of game and wriggled happily, hooting at the top of his lungs.  
  
Finally, though, he managed it and let Pig go. Pig hummed contentedly and fluttered about for a moment before landing on Harry's shoulder and proceeding to pick at the fabric of his robe.  
  
"You were dropped when you were little, weren't you?" he asked Pig, who hooted to assure him that, yes indeed, he had been. Sighing and wondering why Ron persisted in using the tiny owl (no... he knew exactly why), Harry cracked open the seal of the envelope and pulled the letter out. It was simple and to the point:  
  
Harry -  
  
I'll be in my office next Sunday catching up on "paperwork." Meet me there at nine or so (in the morning.) Thanks.  
  
Ron hadn't bothered signing it - his singularly bad penmanship was an effective enough signature for anyone who knew him and tried to decipher his writing. Ron didn't even have an office, other than the tremendously messy, paper-filled spare room in the flat he and Hermione lived in and the briefing room he shared with the rest of the Aurors at the Ministry, to which he would never invite Harry in a million years. No... it was to another place entirely, and Harry really *did* feel guilty this time as he suppressed a surge of excitement that had usually come with some impending bout of rule-breaking, at least in the former days.  
  
The office in question was Liber's, a tiny and thoroughly disreputable pub just on the wrong side of Knockturn Alley. Harry shuddered, thinking about the one and only time he'd been in there, which had been because Ron had asked to meet him and Harry, not even bothering to ask directions, had found himself directed there by the most hostile-looking witch he'd ever seen. It had turned out that Ron had wanted to tell him he'd decided to ask Hermione to marry him, but in Harry's opinion, that was still no excuse. The place had been - and, given the pace of change in the wizard world, probably still was - a hole.  
  
Still... the promise of seeing Draco made a fugitive excitement skitter across Harry's nerves. He began to walk, suddenly energetic, ignoring the pain in his leg. He could no longer run, but felt he could - his heart raced on a spike of adrenaline, outpacing the hasty, awkward shuffling of the rest of his body.  
  
For a moment he *felt* it.  
  
What 'it' was... he could not say, but it was unlike anything in his past experience. Unlike his grief over his parents, the distant ache brought by loss in the war, this was true and undiluted - he *felt* it coming from some deep part of him, welling up like water, taking hold of him, and he was helpless in its grip.  
  
And he was *wanting* to be, that was the terrible strangeness of it. It was good, and he wanted to be swept up in it, to just go with it for the first time. It wasn't the bitter, haunting fear of memory - no, he fought that always - but something else he could not put a name to because he'd never felt it. He moved swiftly down the hall, Ron's note clutched in his hand, mind already spinning out on its flight past the walls of the castle, racing ahead like his heart in anticipation. 


	4. Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR  
  
+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+  
(Ovid )  
  
Several days of anxiety combined with the distressingly spicy casserole the house elves had served the previous night had combined to generate an unhappy ferment in Harry's stomach. He awoke that Sunday morning after a night of fitful sleep, fingers digging into the flesh of his abdomen as though he could reach through his skin and remove the offending organ, along with the worry that had set up residence inside it.  
  
His mirror commented on his unnaturally pale face, but Harry ignored it - although, privately, he knew absolutely that he looked as bad as he felt. What had once been euphoria, so bold and unexpected in the grayish monotony of academic life, had transformed into *this*, this sick, acidic feeling deep inside him. Like acid, it worked through his body, shredding him into so many frayed nerves, so that by the time he finished dressing all he wanted to do was find a bottle of Living Death, crawl inside, and never come out.  
  
/You're not backing down,/ he told himself forcefully as he opened his window. He'd planned to fly to Hogsmeade and Apparate directly to Liber's, but even the promise of flying held little attraction - for first time in a long time (probably the first time *ever*, he amended), he balked at transformation. /You're not backing down,/ he repeated. /Ron's done too much for you to... to chicken out. *You've* done too much. You *promised.*/  
  
Well, he hadn't exactly promised anything, but remembering the last words that had passed between himself and Draco, and the difficulty of writing his letter made him realize he *had*, in a way. He had offered himself hope - worse, he had offered Draco hope... And hope, although it was so insubstantial, the farthest thing removed from a promise, was the cruelest promise there was.  
  
"You're welcome to stay," Draco had said.  
  
Looking back now on those simple words and the reaction they had evoked, Harry wondered how he had managed to keep from... exploding at them. He had felt so many things - fear, joy, pleasure in the simple request, annoyance that it had taken so long, an exultation so strong... and terror at that. For a brief moment, he had not seen the unexpectedly sober, still-wary young blond-haired man - he saw the boy the man had been, his gray eyes alight with cruel mischief, his sleek, silvered voice dripping hatred so casually. It had been enough for him to wonder, irrationally, why he was so pleased, so *exultant* at the invitation of an enemy.  
  
What *was* Draco Malfoy to him? He knew what Draco Malfoy had *been*... but now? He could not say. So, for the first time since they had met again, he retreated, furious with his cowardice.  
  
"Thank you. I really do need to get going, though - I need to finish preparing a test to torture the fifth-year Ravenclaws." And as he had spoken, he had thought: /I don't know how to handle this. I want it, but I don't know what to do with it... please understand this, Draco. If you don't understand anything else, understand this./  
  
And Draco had said, in a tone of voice Harry could not quite place, but that hovered between being happy and being sad, the bitter, terrible kind of hope: "Come back, then." He had paused, then added, "Any time. You're always... that is to say, you're welcome here."  
  
Something unfamiliar had flickered through those gray eyes. It was not malice or hatred or bored superiority - and it wasn't frightening, no, it was beautiful and gave Harry the courage to say, "I will."  
  
Now he held fast to that courage and the simple resolution that had gotten him through years of life with the Dursleys and years more of war - everything had come so far. He had come so far, Ron had, Draco had maybe come the farthest... He couldn't let that go to waste. Not for the first time, he wondered what Draco had lost in the war. He knew the tally for his own side, of course, had recited it during the courses of many sleepless nights. /Bill and Ginny Weasley, Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnigan, Parvati Patil, Severus Snape, Stewart Ackerley.../ The list would drone on and on, and never once had Draco entered into it, until recently.  
  
Until he had seen the pain in Draco's eyes when he had spoken of his father and mother, and knew that pain because it was his own - except maybe this pain was crueler for Draco, who had watched both his parents die, whereas he had been a baby, crying in an abandoned and desolated ruin, but crying just as much from cold and hunger as he had been from sorrow. But still, however it happened... orphans, the pair of them.  
  
Harry *knew* that loneliness, and knew he couldn't keep existing in it - and Draco, whatever he had done, could not exist like that.  
  
That thought was all it took for him to throw himself out the window.   
  
He felt the merciless hand of gravity seize him, the split-second reflex of his transformation rippling through his body, and the arms he had stretched out in reflexive desperation became wings that caught the air, embraced it, and propelled him upward. On he flew, past Hogsmeade, heading south and east into the opalescent fire of the dawn, flying on and on until his internal clock told him the inevitable: that he had to land and change and Apparate, all to meet his best friend, and someone else who was not a friend, but almost - was something less, and more.  
  
* * *  
  
Liber's had not changed in the three years between Harry's first (and only) visit and the present day. It was a little grimier, if that was at all possible, but the clientele was as disreputable-looking as ever, and several of them eyed him appraisingly. He was, Harry supposed, an easy "mark", or whatever the street-talk was for the stupid tourist-type person who wandered into the wrong part of town, what with his being short, dressed in robes a bit too big for him, and looking utterly lost.  
  
And of course Ron was *late.* Only by two minutes, but *still*... It was two minutes too many, in Harry's opinion. He had been unnaturally jerky and ill at ease after his transformation, having lost the reassurance of flight, and the anger that came on at the slow imperfection of his body had him on a short fuse. Steeling himself against the pain of walking as normally as he could manage, he opened Liber's peeling, weather-beaten door and stepped into a common room that did not look much better.  
  
It occurred to him, looking around the cramped and dim confines of the place, that he should leave right away. Instead of doing the sensible thing, he skulked through the shadows and found a place at a corner table. He took the seat that faced the door so he could see Ron when he came in - and so he could see the rest of the room, which had apparently taken an apathetic interest in him. Two demonic-looking beings sitting at the bar glared at him distrustfully but after a moment of silent study, turned back to their drinks.  
  
The man who was presumably the barkeep, a living boulder with arms to rival Hagrid's, stumped up to where Harry was sitting at a darkened corner table and trying to be inconspicuous. He eyed Harry evilly from his great height, his expression made even more menacing by the wild black hair framing the craggy face - a face very much like Hagrid's as well, but completely without the warmth. There was a tense moment of silence during which Harry tried not to make eye contact.  
  
"You ain't jus' gon' sit here all day, are yeh?" the man demanded, his voice rolling over Harry like a tidal wave. "This place is for *payin'* customers - and if you ain't payin', you ain't stayin'. So what's it gonna be? You got five seconds to answer or yer out on yer skinny lil' ass."  
  
"Uhhh... it's a bit early for me," Harry apologized, racking his brain desperately for something to get him out of this. Where the bloody hell was Ron? Ron! "I'm waiting for a friend," he said in what he hoped was a steady voice. "He should be along in a minute. He'll get something."  
  
"Right, mate," said the barkeep, "and I'm the bloody Minister of Magic. Who's this friend o' yers, anyway?"  
  
"Him!" A bright red head appeared in the doorway, a beacon of salvation, and Harry seized on it, pointing wildly in its direction. Ron turned immediately, as if drawn by the magnetic force of the desperation emanating from Harry's corner, to where his best friend sat half-hidden by the gigantic body of the bartender, who turned ponderously about to see what Harry was pointing at so wildly.  
  
"Mr. Weasley!" The basso voice skipped up a couple octaves. "We didn't know you were coming."  
  
"It's no big thing, Aurel," Ron said as he strode casually up to "Aurel," offering a hand that was engulfed in one of Aurel's massive paws. "How have things been?" he asked, looking around curiously. Harry watched, a bit stunned.  
  
Aurel's face split in a terrifying leer Harry supposed was his version of a smile. "It's goin' pretty good, Mr. Weasley," he rumbled, caressing Ron's last name like a lion purring. "We got a pretty steady business here, and it's gotten better since the war ended." Real pride touched his voice at that.  
  
It did not take much effort for Harry to keep from saying it didn't look like things had improved much. He glanced around at the dingy, shabby room and the equally dilapidated creatures that inhabited it. A large, shadowy figure moved in the far corner, a massive lump about Aurel's size. A half giant? Another one? Harry tried not to keep gawking, but it wasn't easy. Inwardly, he was convinced that two of the beings at the bar were not fully human either. /You'd think you were... what? Some snot-nosed first year stumbling around Knockturn Alley./ He amended that to 'second year.' /Not everything's bloody peaches and roses Potter - you should know that./  
  
Ron's voice pulled him from his consternation. "I'm glad to hear it, Aurel. Could I get... uh, pumpkin juice?"  
  
"Of course, sir," Aurel said placidly, but the look he turned on Harry was anything but. "Anything f'r yer friend?"  
  
"He'll have a pumpkin juice too," Ron said before Harry could get his mouth open. "And he's okay, Aurel - this is Harry Potter." Aurel's rocklike face twisted in surprise. "Harry, this is Aurel Jotunwulf. He runs the place."  
  
"It's very good to meet you," Harry managed, holding out his hand.  
  
Aurel's hand closed around his in a powerful grip. "Blimey! Harry Potter." The deep voice quavered upward a bit at Harry's name and the beady gaze searched through the thatch of Harry's hair for the ever-famous scar. "It *is* an honor. Uh, sir."  
  
"The juice, Aurel," Ron said softly. He dropped into the seat across the table from Harry, and the wooden chair creaked in protest - but, fortunately, did not give out. Aurel, after releasing Harry's hand from custody, muttered apologies for the misunderstanding and stumped off to disappear into the gloom of the back room. For a moment, Ron watched him go, a faint smile at the corners of his mouth, before turning back to Harry. The smile vanished.  
  
"Everything's all set," he said softly, leaning a bit closer. Harry sank down in his seat and waited for Ron to say anything more. Finally: "We have to take a Portkey there - I got a friend in the Department of Magical Transportation to arrange it for me. From there, I'm heading to the manor directly, you'll have to transform and come an hour or so later - the other Ministry people should be gone by then. By the time you get there, a window in Draco's study on the lower floor should be open. You'll have to find it."  
  
Aurel materialized with their juice before Harry could say anything. He hovered for a moment, mostly to assure Ron that he didn't have to pay anything - it was on the house, sir, and thanks again - and then drifted away uncertainly to tend to the mysterious figures at the bar.  
  
"This is harder than setting up a blind date," Ron sighed. He tossed down the glass of juice in one swallow - "knocking back a shot" was how George would have put it - and set it down to stare at it moodily. "Remember the time Dean and Seamus tried to set you up with Susan Bones during sixth year?"  
  
"I don't know how they decided the dungeons would be a romantic place to meet." Harry sipped at his juice, wincing at the taste - what *kind* of pumpkin was this anyway? - and the memory of the date... and Dean and Seamus, who were dead. Susan had been about as surprised as he had been at finding each other in the otherwise deserted dungeons, abandoned by their friends, but she had recovered far more quickly. After talking for a painful half hour or so, she'd sent him back to his common room with a kiss on the cheek ("She kissed you like she'd kiss her brother!" Dean had lamented) and a smile that said it was nothing personal.  
  
"Seamus wouldn't have known romantic if it had bitten him on the nose," Ron said with finality. He reached across the table, filched Harry's glass out from under his nose, and swallowed half of it. At Harry's indignant sputter of protest, he smirked and said, "I saw you - I know you don't like it. And I'm dying over here."  
  
"What *is* this place?" Harry asked. He made no move to claim his stolen glass.  
  
Ron snickered. "You asked that the last time we came. It's not a bar, really... more like a, oh, I don't know. Aurel's a half-giant who came over with Hagrid to help during the war - that's his wife, Yasmina, over in the corner, doing the receipts." The gigantic, shadowy hulk now identified as Yasmina raised its neatly-coiffed head; Ron waved in its direction, and it waved back before returning to its business. Ron continued in a somewhat more quiet tone: "He and she got money from the Ministry to set up a place where all half-humans or non-human sentient beings could come and stay after Dumbledore convinced the Ministry to issue a general amnesty. There are a few vampires here, a couple werewolves, goblins, and things that live here. I guess they figure there's safety in numbers still."  
  
"They seem to think you're okay," Harry said doubtfully.  
  
"The Aurors helped protect them during the war," Ron said. "I was assigned here right after I finished training." A precariously soft expression crossed Ron's face, and for a moment, Harry's irritable best friend looked almost... *sentimental*, if 'sentimental' and 'Ron Weasley' could ever be in the same room together.  
  
"Well," Ron said a bit too loudly as he made a show of studying his watch, "I think it's time to get going."  
  
"Right." Harry thought he did a pretty good job of keeping his voice steady despite the mutinous shuddering in his heart. Numb suddenly, too overwhelmed by what was about to happen, he stood and trailed Ron through a side door leading out of the bar, steadfastly ignoring Aurel's suspicious gaze following them. The door banged shut behind him, echoing with absolute finality in the tiny, abandoned alleyway.  
  
He hovered uncertainly as Ron poked around for a minute. The scraping of garbage and random junk was harsh in the silence, and he could hear the tiny, furtive skitterings of rats fleeing from their disturbed havens. Harry glanced in the direction of Diagon Alley, which seemed to be very far off, still quiet on a Sunday morning - and it seemed *too* quiet, suddenly. His heart gave one terrific thud, jolted out of its humdrum pace by adrenalin.  
  
For a moment, he was back in the war, sneaking, running, hiding, spying, attacking, the taste of a curse on his mouth, tripping over a loose stone, looking up into pale gray eyes as astonished as his own, feeling hatred and despair sweep over him.  
  
And then he was back, with Ron's hand on his shoulder. His gaze darted from the hand on his shoulder to the one holding the battered cowboy hat to Ron's shadowed, concerned face.  
  
"You okay, Harry?"  
  
Harry licked his lips and swallowed twice before nodding.  
  
Ron's expression told him he was in doubt about that, but he did not press. Instead, he held out the Portkey - almost, though, as one would hold out a challenge - and Harry, swallowing his sudden fear, placed a hand upon it.  
  
For an infinite second, the world remained exactly the same. Just as Harry opened his mouth to ask if there was something wrong, he felt the inevitable tug just behind his navel, as if something had hooked him through the gut, the world whirled, vanished, and reappeared again, this time made of trees and a cold breeze and the smell of open air.  
  
"Thank Merlin that worked," Ron muttered, folding up the hat and tucking it safely into his robes. "This is set for another two hours from now," he continued, "but I'll be taking it by myself. You'll have to continue straight back to Hogwarts, however you want to do it."  
  
There was something of... washing one's hands of the situation in Ron's tone that made Harry vaguely uncomfortable. A small warning stirred deep inside him, and were this anyone other than Ron, he would have thought to feel his scar twinge. But this was *Ron*, who was looking at him again with an expression that reminded him of their old school days - sort of concerned, partly clueless, but determined to find out what was going on.  
  
"I've never been in love with my worst enemy," Ron said at last. He turned on his heel as if that were the end of discussion, then paused and turned back. "Well, maybe I *have* been," he added ruefully. Harry squelched the jealousy that rose at seeing Ron lightly touch the band on the third finger of his left hand. "I don't think, though, that this is the same thing."  
  
/It's not the same thing./ Ron's words touched on something that had been harbored deep in Harry's mind, the formless thing to which he had been trying to give shape. It was that thing that had haunted him, turning his happiness to fear, worrying at his confidence until it had become nothing. /This isn't the same thing... but when have you ever been scared of the new and different?/  
  
"You're right," Harry said sturdily, surprised at his sudden confidence. "It's not."  
  
/This is something different./  
  
/What happened to wanting *normal*, Potter?/ The snide little voice made one last rally, but Harry ignored it.  
  
Ron grinned and straightened a bit, looking more like Harry's best friend than he had in many days, and Harry took some more confidence from seeing his friend back again. "Variety is the spice of life," Ron commented with a bit of a smirk. "I'll see you later."  
  
His best friend vanished almost before the last word left his mouth, leaving Harry alone to kill an hour or so worth of time in the forest. It wasn't difficult to do: a few minutes later, Harry transformed and coasted the idle breezes of the forest before angling up through the treetops. He kept low, skimming over the very roof of the trees, darting like a ghost through the shadowy, uncertain light there.  
  
The forest was ancient, the remains of what had probably once been a single, massive body of trees stretching from corner to corner of the sky. Fields intruded here and there, but they were tiny squares of cultivated land, uncertain intrusions upon a much older place. To his east, the light-drinking bulk of Malfoy manor stood blackly against the sun, casting its shadow over its manicured lawns and gardens. Harry shivered inwardly, thinking of his first daunting walk up to that place, his amazement that Draco had been at home in such monstrosity.  
  
Slowly, the sun ticked off an hour and Harry angled back in the direction of the house, seeing the edges of the building, rising from the blanket of shadows, begin to bristle with the forms of gargoyles and sheela na'gigs, hideous and leering faces with bodies distorted as though stretched upon the rack. For a moment, he wished for his human sight, the sight that would allow him to see everything in blurs and vagueness, not this... not this, with all those writhing beings yawning their greetings at him with howling mouths.  
  
Unable to look at those things any longer, Harry tucked his wings against his body and freefell, losing his fear in the shocking rush of wind and gravity pulling at him. The world sped away from him, vanishing in a ripcurrent of wind through his feathers. He saw, dimly, the sky and horizon whip past him faster than they ever had when he'd been on a broomstick, or so it seemed.  
  
A heartbeat later he pulled himself out from his headlong dive, sweeping in a parabola across the grass and over the lake placed before the castle, the tips over his feathers playing over the unreflective surface of the water. The lake flashed away beneath him and he banked sharply to skim the shadowy walls of the house, keeping a sharp eye out for the open room Ron had promised him, and found it after a few minutes of searching. It was hidden in an alcove and shrouded by a heavy cloak of ivy and climbing weeds.  
  
The window was open enough for him to land on the ledge and wriggle his way inside it. He flapped clumsily onto a tall curio stand, gathered himself, then launched off it and transformed.  
  
Again, the shock of shape-changing hit him.  
  
Harry blinked and passed a hand over his eyes. Going from a hawk to a human had caused the dimness of the room to shatter his vision like a hammer blow, and he reeled for a moment, lost, before he regained himself. This always happened, this cruel sloughing-off of sight, and though it always happened he never got used to it. Even with the horror of the damned, stony beings clinging to the castle walls so clear in his mind, he wished for the invincibility of vision and lamented losing it again. He always felt powerful in his other form, confident in himself. And it was enough for him to think for one swift, perilous moment that he would always be this clear-sighted, omniscient as it were, that nothing was hidden from him.  
  
And he exulted in his power as he wheeled through the sky, the tips of his feathers like razors through the clouds - it was always that way, and so it was inevitable that when he returned to the leaden weight of his human form and the gravity of logic, the perfect clarity of his vision, the brightness of it, vanished.  
  
Blinded by what was, to his imperfect human sight, total darkness, it took time to recover - time to think /This is normal, this is natural, it's okay, it's fine, just close your eyes and count to three/ and to do as he commanded himself. After seconds passed, each one punctuated by the panicky thudding of his heart against his chest, Harry opened his eyes cautiously.  
  
The dark, shadowy place had resolved now into a badly lit display room of sorts, elegant and expensive-looking even in its gloomy shroud. What little of the morning light that made it through cracks in brocaded drapes was transformed into a sullen sort of halo around the edges of furniture and decorations. Harry looked around, half-whistled under his breath, at what he saw.  
  
Gold and silver, old green-tinged copper glinted here and there where the light strayed in the shadows. Ivory, silk, a beautiful egg decorated like the Faberge eggs Harry had read about in one of his aunt's oversized coffee table books. The near-darkness of the room seemed criminal for the way it hid such beautiful things. Twice, Harry almost pulled out his wand to provide some light, but twice he made himself stop - he didn't know who was watching, or who would know when, or if, magic was being done.  
  
He contented himself with wandering, then, peering into glassy display cases and examining the larger works that were left free-standing. Feeling more than a little guilty about snooping through someone's private things - never mind that they were Draco's, and /What if you caught *him* going through *your* things?/ he asked himself - Harry poked around the room. In a corner was a parquetry-worked cedar bureau and atop it stood a crystalline sculpture, glittering even in the darkness. Thoughts of improper touching and going through things filtered out of Harry's brain when he saw it.  
  
Almost before he knew it, he stood before it, and a moment later - barely time enough to process the thought - he had it in his hands. It was light, unexpectedly so, as though it was nothing more than a shell and nothing solid, shaped in graceful curves and loops his eyes couldn't follow. Over and over, he traced the path of one of those arcs, only to lose it as it braided itself with other strands just as graceful and bewitching, or as light danced at the edge of a prismatic surface to distract him from his study.  
  
Harry absently wound his fingers over and through the piece, entranced by the near liquidity of the crystalline curves against his skin, the way it all weighed so close to nothing, little more than air made into something shining and beautiful - or like moonlight or sunlight on water. Had it been made by a wizard sculptor who could somehow give shape to those sorts of things? He examined the sculpture, looking for a maker's mark or signature, but found nothing. It *seemed* magical, though, with its impossible twists and involutions - yet did something need to be made of enchantments to be magical? He worried at the knot of the question for a time, turning the sculpture over and over in his hands, seeing the lovely intricacy of it and *not* seeing it at the same time.  
  
That such a thing was in the Malfoys' manor house gave him to believe this was something magic, whether made from it for made to use it - unless, of course, he had stumbled across the Malfoys' secret Muggle shrine. And it was true enough, all the other objects in the room could have been found in any Muggle museum or a wealthy collector's private stash, and the Malfoys Harry knew would have killed themselves before owning any of it.  
  
But... could they have ever loved beauty - or anything at all - for its own sake? Had any Malfoy - Lucius, Narcissa, Draco, the hundreds of Malfoys that had come before - looked at this sculpture and loved it because it was a beautiful thing?  
  
Would Draco ever look at *him* and simply love him because Harry, who was certainly not beautiful and was damaged goods with his glasses and scar and bad leg, at least might be something different in Draco's eyes?  
  
He despaired of the answer and put down the sculpture. A stray beam of light danced upon a sleek curve for a moment. Harry saw, in that same light, that the rich cedar of the bureau was covered in dust; his fingers and the cuff of his sleeve had left tracks it, just three fine slash marks that revealed the wood beneath its gray coating, like shiny new skin beneath the dead layers.  
  
Looking around some more, he saw that the rest of the room was encased in dust as well, shrouded by it. The dust drank the little light the drapes allowed inside, and lay like a blanket of thin, dirty snow over every surface. Harry stood frozen for a moment, listening closely, and his breathing seemed unnaturally loud to him in the utter silence of the room - the dust had drunk up everything, he thought irrationally: all the light, the beauty of the place. It was like standing in a tomb.  
  
The silence disturbed him deeply. Suddenly restless and needing movement, Harry paced the room despite the ever-present pain in his left leg. /Don't think about it,/ he told himself fiercely. /Don't, under any circumstances, think about it./ The room began to close around him, tight and smothering. The treasures it held now seemed more like the relics of some person long dead, things that should not be disturbed.  
  
A flash of movement snagged his attention.  
  
He froze, staring closely. There was nothing for a moment, then something moved again. Curiosity worked its way through his surprise, and he walked in the direction of the oddly beckoning little thing, which proved to be a wizard photograph in an improbably ornate gilt frame, a wizard photograph of three pale-haired people - two adults and a child of about four or so.  
  
It didn't take much to recognize Lucius Malfoy - Harry would know those pale, condescending eyes anywhere. The woman next to him, dressed in expensive robes, would be Narcissa. /She died, too,/ Harry thought absently, picking up the photograph, feeling the heft of the heavy frame. /She died because you lived./ She did not look as haughty as he remembered from the few times he'd run across her. Instead, she looked almost... happy, if Harry could ever ascribe such a human emotion to a Malfoy.  
  
/That was low,/ he chastised himself.  
  
His gaze drifted to the four-year-old boy in trousers and a white shirt, the figure that had caught his attention in the first place.  
  
It was strange looking at a younger Draco, because Harry could not think of Draco as ever having been young. At school, Hermione had sniffed condescendingly over his juvenile behavior (to be fair, Harry decided, he and Ron hadn't been much better), but as the years wore on, something in Draco had changed. His taunting had stopped at the end of fourth year, and a cold watchfulness had replaced it. The frigid laughter had vanished into silent mockery, and when Draco had moved through the Great Hall, he'd seemed to suck up the attention from its occupants - the way he walked, the silence and calculatedness of it... Harry hadn't recognized it at the time, but he remembered being vaguely frightened of such a figure - it had been instinctual, maybe, but from fifth year on, he had never thought of Draco as being a fellow teenager, but rather something that had worn teenaged flesh.  
  
He'd tried to talk with Ron about it, but his best friend had dismissed it with a wave of his hand and typical "Sod Malfoy, anyhow." Hermione had looked at him and said in her best, stating-the-perfectly-obvious voice, "Well, he's a *Malfoy*, Harry. I suppose he just finished selling the rest of his soul to Voldemort." Her tone had darkened. "What was left of it, anyway."  
  
Now, looking at the photo, Harry found it difficult to connect the little boy with the young man he'd known in school - and the man he knew now, whose eyes held a light somewhere between the nearly effusive happiness of that long-ago picture and the cruel superiority of his school-day self... and a light that was something else, not made of either age.  
  
/What is it?/ he wondered, thinking back to his few conversations with Draco, and the ones between Draco and Ron he'd eavesdropped on at Hogwarts. /What's there?/  
  
Most people would have dismissed this as irrational, but Harry Potter was not most people. He *wanted* to find out, although the prospect set his heart pounding irritably at the wall of his chest again. Terror leeched through his bones, cooling his blood. /You're not afraid, are you?/ the tiny, silky voice asked. /What could the Great Harry Potter possibly fear? That he'll turn you into something like him?/  
  
/I'm already like him./  
  
Voices echoed in the hallway beyond the door, and he heard footsteps drawing closer, hollow on marble tiles. He could pick out Ron's nearly ghost-like tread, the more substantial but still light sound of Draco's feet. Their voices rose above them, twisted a bit by the high ceiling of the hall. Harry caught his breath, listening.  
  
"I don't buy it, *Weasley*," Draco was saying. Harry could almost see his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Fudge is a Slytherin through and through - didn't you *know* that?"  
  
"Of course I *know* that," Ron said back, plainly annoyed - and probably near the end of his rope. "And I also know that Fudge would rather put his eyes out than see the forest for the trees." He sounded like he had said this many times before.  
  
"So you're..." Draco paused and his voice lowered. Harry tried to catch the following words, but heard nothing except a low, sussurant whisper.  
  
"If I am?" Ron's voice rang like a bell in the silence. "It's none of your damn business *Malfoy*."  
  
"Just so we're clear on that," Draco answered.   
  
Tensely, Harry listened for any more, but if more words were exchanged, he didn't hear them. Instead, he only heard Malfoy commanding one of the house-elves to show "Master Weasley" the way out - "Master Wheezy will come this way, sir," the house-elf squeaked - and Ron's already faint footsteps becoming fainter as he strode down the hallway.  
  
Harry wondered if Ron had known he was hiding in here like some sort of criminal. Well, he *was* a criminal, wasn't he? Of a sort, granted... he wasn't breaking and entering, but consorting with a known, if former, Death Eater counted for more than just being a misdemeanor in the Ministry's book. Resolutely, he pushed the fear of his law-abiding self away, and squared himself for what was coming.  
  
/Listen to you! Do you think you're going to have a bloody wizards' duel?/ He tried to make his posture less defensive, but it didn't seem to work very well, and as Draco opened the door, spilling light into the darkened room, he had again the distinct sense of ungracefulness, that he was awkward and uncertain Harry Potter, standing in a roomful of beautiful things, watching Draco Malfoy watch him with those keen gray eyes. 


	5. Chapter Five

+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+  
(Ovid)  
  
CHAPTER FIVE  
  
"My father had one of the house elves take that one Christmas," Draco said, gesturing to the photograph. "We were in Malaysia, visiting witch doctors over winter holidays. I even got to leave school a few days early."  
  
Belatedly, Harry realized he was still clutching the picture and he hastily set it down, in the blind hope that if he set it down quickly enough, Draco wouldn't have seen him snooping after all.  
  
"Did you know that they have ten different versions of what we call the Avada Kedavra curse?" Draco asked. Harry shook his head wordlessly, and Draco grinned a bit at that. "Well, they do. Unfortunately, my father couldn't buy any off of them - they weren't interested in the usual stuff. Although..." he paused, and there was a momentary flash of the old calculation in his eyes, "some of my father's friends would have offered anything to have a chance at getting any one of those spells."  
  
"So there are ten ways to utterly destroy a person's soul?"  
  
"More than that, and not all of them involve magic," Draco said. "In fact, I'd probably say magic is in the minority, when it comes to that."  
  
Harry nodded again, wishing the gesture were more eloquent. He glanced wildly around, fidgeted a moment, and ultimately decided on putting the picture back. The blond child in the picture offered him an unexpectedly bright smile; he caught himself on the edge of smiling back at it.  
  
The silence in the room threatened to return to its crypt-like depths, and Harry struggled for the words to keep it from going back to that. Still, the inherent stillness of the room fought against him, that and the cool, calm face with which Draco Malfoy favored him. He cast about his mind, searching for something to say, wondering where all the words he'd imagined had fled to, and was on the verge of despair when Draco rescued him.  
  
"Come on," he said. He turned on his heel and headed out the door into the bright hallway beyond, barely giving Harry time to collect himself and follow. "I've never liked this room much - too stuffy for me. There's a nicer one just down the hall here," Draco continued as Harry caught up. "Mother never really let me in there - it was too full of stuff I could break, she said."  
  
"My Aunt Petunia never let me in the sitting room," Harry offered, wincing a bit at the knowledge that Aunt Petunia's valuables had mostly consisted of porcelain 'collectibles' and multiple framed portraits of Dudley. "I remember when I was trying to escape from my cousin once and ended up crashing into this side table... I managed to break the pig she had on top of it."  
  
"Pig?"  
  
"Porcelain pig," Harry said, grinning a bit at the blank expression on Draco's face. It was not something he usually associated with Draco, and seeing it... "She wasn't very happy," he added hastily, in an attempt to get his thoughts back on track. "I got a week in the closet for that."  
  
"The closet? Is that some sort of Muggle expression?" A smile teased the corner of Draco's mouth.  
  
"No..." Harry wondered why Draco, being Slytherin and an ex-Death Eater and all, seemed totally unfamiliar with the concept of cruel and unusual punishment, or else amused by it. /Maybe because nothing was cruel and unusual for them./ "I mean it literally - a week in the closet under the stairs."  
  
"For a porcelain pig?" Draco asked, casting a doubtful look at Harry.  
  
"Indeed, yes," Harry said. "For a porcelain pig."  
  
"Muggles," Draco said at last, in a tone of voice that Harry could not quite interpret. Judgment? Mystification?  
  
Draco paused by a closed door, so abruptly that Harry walked two steps past him before he could react. A pale hand searched through folds of black robe, searching for what Harry could not guess, until he saw the briefly sorrowful look pass through Draco's eyes, and he realized it - and knew it, because he had seen that expression from across a packed and jeering courtroom as the Minister of Magic himself, bristling like a particularly ferocious little dog, took Draco's wand from him and snapped it two.  
  
The whipcrack of ash splitting had obliterated the reedy babble of voices. Even so, Fudge had had to call for assistance in severing the dragon's heart-string. Harry had seen, over the heads of a gaggle of vindictively muttering witches, the wild hope on Draco's face as the man watched Fudge struggling with a pair of magical scissors to cut that filament. He had seen that hope die as the shears snicked through it at the last.   
  
There had been a puff of smoke as the heart-string evaporated and splinters of ash rained upon the floor. And Draco's eyes, gray as dead coals, followed them downward. Fudge had swept aside the splinters with a foot then gestured for the black-clad knot of Aurors to take away the prisoner. Draco had not resisted.  
  
Now Draco scowled and pushed the door open, and the bang of wood contacting with the wall startled Harry out of memory. "I always forget that I don't lock this room anymore," Draco said over his shoulder as he stepped inside. Whatever sorrow or memory had been on his face had vanished. "Would you like some tea? Crumpets, scones, and all that?" His lips twisted in a dry smile - for a moment Harry was captivated - and he said, "My mother was always on me to be the perfect host, at least until I got a wife to take over the social calendar."  
  
"It looks like you managed to avoid that."  
  
"Oh, yes, yes," Draco agreed vaguely. "Becoming a Death Eater was a surefire way to keep me out of every witch's little black book... And it worked, didn't it?"  
  
Draco moved restlessly about the room, footsteps muffled by the thick carpeting, and in watching him, Harry found a chance to take in his surroundings. More of the same opulence, he saw, wondering if Draco ever got tired of it - the host of portraits looming over them, their mouths moving soundlessly, the decorations done in precious gems and metals, and even a large tapestry in which the ornate knotworks and interlace designs moved and shifted with each passing second. He glanced up into the towering vault of the roof, and saw that on the second story there were shelves upon shelves of books, their chains glinting dully in the light from recessed windows. Dust motes played about idly on the heights.  
  
"Would you like some tea?" Draco asked again. The look he sent Harry as he said this was almost pleading, and Harry found himself nodding. "Blinker!" Draco called, raising his voice only slightly.  
  
Blinker appeared with a resounding crack and puff of smoke. "Master called?" he squeaked, buggy eyes darting back and forth between Draco and Harry. "What is Master needing?"  
  
"Tea," Draco said curtly.  
  
"Right away, Master," Blinker said, and vanished.  
  
The echo of Blinker's disappearance had time enough to fade and die before Draco spoke again.  
  
"I didn't thank you yet for coming," he said. The words were unexpectedly soft and heartfelt. Harry felt something twinge deep within him, a subterranean and fugitive sensation, a tremor. "And your letter," Draco added. "I got it along with some stuff that Weas- that Ron sent... I have to admit that I wasn't expecting it."  
  
"I told you that I'd owl you," Harry, who could remember the entirety of their last conversation, said.  
  
"Lots of things happen to keep people from keeping promises," Draco said. The lack of feeling in his voice disturbed Harry. Was it sadness? Resignation? Cynicism? What was behind those words? An unexpected smile softened the lines of Draco's face. "But, for what it's worth, I was hoping that you'd be able to get something through to me - I don't exactly have an open post here, and I can't imagine Fudge being very happy if he knew what was going on."  
  
"Did Ron talk to you?" Harry knew very well that Ron *had*, but he wasn't about to say anything. As far as Draco knew, that fragmentary conversation outside door of Harry's hiding place had gone unheard by any snooping third party, such as Harry Potter.  
  
Immediately, the gray eyes became guarded. "If you mean he told me you were coming, yes, he did talk to me," Draco answered. The caution vanished as swiftly as it had appeared. "And you know, as awful as it is, I think I owe the Weasel something for this..."  
  
"For what?"  
  
Blinker appeared with another pop and smoky exhalation, forestalling the answer - although from the trapped, confused expression on Draco's face, that answer might not have been forthcoming. Draco jumped, scowled so fiercely that the house elf took a couple hopping steps back and nearly tripped over its tea cozy, and pointed to a low side table. Blinker understood the silent command and darted to place the tea service (silver and expensive-looking, naturally) atop it, setting it down with an expensive-sounding clatter, and then vanished again.  
  
Neither one of them made a move for the tea set. The question hung unanswered in the air, and it was on Harry's tongue to ask it again when Draco spoke.  
  
"For making your promise possible, I suppose," he said in a voice so soft and strained it was difficult to hear. "When I told you that you'd be welcome back, I was almost half-hoping that you wouldn't, or that maybe the Ministry wouldn't make it possible for you... so I wouldn't have to be saying this right now." His mouth firmed slightly, and the words became stronger. "But you're here now, and I'm happy."  
  
A laugh jolted out of Draco, startling in the lull. "Happy, can you believe it? Happy!" He took a couple of agitated steps over to the tea tray, turned a cup right-side up, fussed a bit with the thick potholder and the sugar tongs before setting them back down. Harry watched all this in silence. "Happy," Draco repeated, rolling the word off his tongue like a strange taste. "Never in my life did I think your presence would ever make me happy."  
  
"I suppose you could say the feeling was mutual," Harry said.  
  
"Yes, I could say that," Draco agreed. He poured a cup of tea and set it back down. "When I said I couldn't ever resent you... After awhile I realized that was true. In the beginning, I think I would have. But now I'm trying very hard, and I can't. Believe me, this is as good as it's going to get."  
  
Harry took a moment to absorb the disjointed speech, so strange and ungraceful coming from Draco, who had always made a habit of smooth, calculated movement, and speech just as refined. "It could get better, though," he offered after a space of thought. "Things can always get better."  
  
"I'm not sure if I could let them," Draco said.  
  
It occurred to Harry that they were talking across a wide breadth of room, standing very nearly at dueling length from each other. He wanted to move closer, but was unsure how. His body rebelled at the possibility of movement, even as something deep within him cried for it.  
  
"Just having you here now is enough." The tea was cooling, ignored on its stand, and Draco was looking at him with something indeterminate in his eyes. "When I got your letter, I thought that would be enough for me - just knowing that you had wanted to see me, even if you never would... Imagine how that would feel. I mean, ignore the fact that I'm a Slytherin, a former Death Eater, the person you've hated most of your life... And just think about it."  
  
It was a rare thing, being offered a chance to see the world from Draco's eyes. Harry took it, and upon that taking felt that small, hidden thing inside him twist again in sympathetic pain. He remembered what it had been like, to be an exile, chained to the dark confines of a closet not big enough for any living being let alone a boy undeserving of such a thing... And even though Draco had earned his punishment - by his own admission he had earned it - what it must be like, to exist from day today without simple human contact, or what contact there was had been made of jeers and reminders of his exile... And he had lost his parents, had watched them die. Harry's mind circled over and over the thought.  
  
"I'd thought about writing you back." Draco was still talking, although the words were abstracted, coming as they were from something other than deep thought - they were wandering, musing, and the light in Draco's eyes was much the same. "I didn't know what to say, other than to ask a question, and that question was, 'What do you think of me now?' It was something I never got to ask you."  
  
Harry felt his jaw begin to ache with the effort of keeping back words of his own. He wanted action badly, even though his muscles were frozen in immobility. He needed to move, to fly, to feel how the sun in the upper galleries felt on his back and in his eyes. /Answer the question,/ he told himself sternly. /He deserves it... and you need to answer it for yourself, because you haven't figured it out yet./  
  
And as he spoke, he became aware that he was discovering the answer for himself.  
  
"I think you're different than what you were before that night, when you could have killed me," Harry said. "Just after it happened - and until just recently - I couldn't figure out *how* it was, because I never got a chance to. I mean, it's not every day two bitter enemies get to talk over tea, is it?" He realized he was babbling and forced himself back to the subject. "But seeing you last time I guess was sort of a confirmation of what I'd been thinking all along - that you'd changed, and I suppose I was fascinated by it. I still am. I wanted to find out more about the person I met that night on the stairwell."  
  
"What person was that?" Draco asked quietly. And the light in his eyes was so bright.  
  
"A person I'd never met before in my life, who saved my life even though he had no reason to. A person who... looked at me and didn't see an enemy, but something else, and I wanted to know what that was."  
  
"I told you that I didn't know what made me save you." Draco was whispering now. "But... but would it make a difference if I told you that I wanted to know about the person I was saving, and I wanted to know why I was saving him, when it meant that I'd be punished?"  
  
"Not now, no," Harry said. He stepped a bit closer, nearly sighing with relief at allowing himself the movement. "It wouldn't matter because I think I'd do anything to find out about you, even if I had to do it myself and you wouldn't tell me anything. I think, in that moment, I realized something... That the war wasn't as black and white as I liked to think it was, and that people weren't that way, either, even the person I'd been told to hate for years. But hearing you say it now..." He shook his head, paused as Draco tensed when it seemed he'd gotten too close. "Now, it's like being at the beginning of something... again."  
  
"The beginning of what?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"Do you feel like starting over?" Draco's voice was barely audible.  
  
"Yes," Harry whispered.  
  
Draco was the one to step closer this time, so close that Harry could feel the ambient heat of his body. Draco had no definable scent, or what there was of it was as colorless as his skin. In the late morning light his hair glowed faintly gold at the edges and Harry was briefly entranced by it.  
  
"How long," Draco asked, the words little more than a breath against the skin of Harry's neck, "how long would you try to know me, assuming we're starting over again?"  
  
"As long as it would take."  
  
Draco nodded and stepped back a bit; the gray eyes he raised to Harry's were challenging. "Even if what you would know would be far worse even than what you got fed by Dumbledore's party line? Even if I told you the worst of what I did as a Death Eater - and even if I told you that I was never sorry for any of it?"  
  
"Even that," Harry said. The fury in Draco's eyes did not abate. "Would you want to know me? What I've done... it hasn't been pretty either." He thought back to his brief stay in that crypt of a room, with its myriad relics, and thought again, /Would you know me even though I'm chipped and bruised and not clean.../  
  
"But you're sorry for it," Draco said, although he did not sound angry at Harry trying to lay claim to some responsibility for bad deeds. "And I never was, not really."  
  
"I'm not interested in what was," Harry said firmly. He paused, briefly surprised at his own resolve - a resolve he certainly did not feel - but kept going before Draco could interrupt. "We've talked about that already, and put it behind us, I thought."  
  
"We never will - I don't think that would ever be possible, and if you ever thought of blinding yourself to that, Potter, think again." The hostility was back in Draco's voice in a flash, and he retreated even further back. Slight as his warmth had been, Harry felt its loss keenly. "Knowing me without knowing about my past... it can't be done. Just like knowing you without knowing you're the Boy Who Bloody Well Lived can't be done, either."  
  
"But it's not the end of who I am," Harry said. He felt his back straighten, and tried without success to keep his voice from becoming defensive. "Ask Ron or Hermione - they'll tell you."  
  
"Oh, I *know* that." The stony look Draco favored him with was liberally dusted with contempt, the same ice-cold contempt Harry could remember from years back. "I saw that for myself that night, when I didn't kill you. The Boy Who Lived..." Draco trailed off, closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they were soft with feeling. "I could have obliterated him without a second thought, I *would* have, and gladly, but the other person I saw there - I never could kill him. Even if the Dark Lord himself stood over me... I never could."  
  
"When I was at your sentencing trial," Harry said, "I saw you when Fudge broke your wand. And I still see that person - I think maybe I always will. I'm not saying that what you did doesn't matter, or that I would dismiss it out of hand... But I know you've changed."  
  
Draco ducked his head and turned. Harry thought he was going for the tea, but Draco continued past it, heading for a corner bookshelf. Harry turned on his heel and watched as Draco sifted through the volumes, absorbed the unconscious grace of each movement as long fingers selected a codex and pulled it out, as they ran over the smooth leather binding of the cover. It was a plain book from what Harry could see, unexpected in a room otherwise full of finery, but the way Draco touched it bespoke that it was a treasured thing.  
  
/Snape's diaries./ Harry didn't know how he knew it, only that they *were.* He remembered his own words to Draco, words that had sounded like an accusation - /You wouldn't treasure Snape's diaires like you do - he would have been just another casualty Dumbledore's side would have to take, am I right?/ Aloud, he said: "I remember the last time we had talked, I told you that you knew what I was telling you was true... and I'm saying it again. *Listen* to me, Draco."  
  
He could see the terrific tension in Draco's shoulders, even though the shapeless drapery of his robes masked his body. It radiated off him, was marked by a dozen little things - the sudden, taut silence, the tensing of his fingers on the cover of the codex, and the sudden hitch of breath that scarred the air between them.  
  
"Nothing." The word was faintly whispered, but Harry still caught it. It drifted aimlessly, a specter with Draco's voice behind it. "I was right," the words were still ghostly, "it was all... nothing."  
  
"What was nothing?"  
  
"Everything." Draco turned around, and his face was so relaxed, so... open, Harry was surprised. The gray eyes were unbarriered, and he found himself thinking back to that last talk they had, when Draco had asked him, with such unexpected shyness and hopefulness, to perhaps come back some day. "Everything was... nothing." A weak grin played at the corners of his lips. "Nothing," he repeated.  
  
"I've given myself too much time to think about this," Draco continued, sobering a bit. "Not, I suppose, that I had much choice in the matter - but I kept thinking about what I would do if I ever got to see you again, and I have to say, my dreams were not much like what's happening right now... but then, I guess that's why they call them dreams, isn't it? And I had enough time to tell myself that they were just dreams, things made of nothing that were even less important than that - and I had enough time to doubt everything that you'd managed to convince me of just before you left me."  
  
"What sorts of things were you, uh, dreaming about?" /And were they anything like mine?/  
  
A secret grin this time. "Oh, the usual... I would end up pouring my heart out to you and you would do the same to me. We would have tea and talk like civilized, happy people, and then move on to other things - and usually at that point, I'd wake up and tell myself that I was slowly going insane from isolation." Draco shrugged dismissively. "But I guess, when it comes down to it, I'm mostly happy to have you... to have you any way I can get you." A faint tinge of pink touched his cheeks as he said this.  
  
"Any way?" Harry barely recognized the squeak that was his voice. "I - I - look at me!"  
  
Draco swept his gaze up and down Harry's body. "I *am* looking," he said with a voice so deceptively neutral it sent a chill skittering up Harry's spine. "And I'll take that, too, someday, if you don't mind."  
  
"What... why?"  
  
The book was laid gently upon a table, traced fleetingly by pale fingertips. The light was suddenly bright, magnified by gold-edged hair. The paintings framing the door moved in distorted ripples, dreamlike. And in the midst of such confusion Draco himself was a solid reassuring thing.  
  
"Leave me that much for now," he said, so close now Harry could touch him with a shaking hand. He clenched them by his side, felt the calluses on his fingertips, ten other, smaller flaws he added to his catalogue. "For now, at least."  
  
And now those cool fingers were against the bony ridge of his cheekbone, and although cool they sent a fugitive warmth stealing through him. The slight pressure of Draco's thumb against the sensitive skin of his temple was electrifying in its clarity - he had not, Harry realized, felt anything in such a way for years. The small thing within him quaked in earnest now, something long dormant that was stirring, awakening, reaching for the heat offered by Draco's touch.  
  
Those fingers across his face ignited him, and he saw with perfect clearness every detail in the smooth, marble face before him - he saw with his hawk eyes, not his imperfect human ones, how there were the faintest lines at the corners of gray eyes, lines of deep worry and too many sleepless nights; he saw the slight flare of nostrils, the way his jaw tensed as if keeping back a thought, the ebb and flow of blood pulsing beneath the skin, the humanity lying closer to the surface than that.  
  
Draco pulled away slowly, with a slow lingering brush of fingers over the line of Harry's jaw. There was wonderment on his face, the expression of a man who has unexpectedly found something long-sought for. "That you've said what you have is enough for me," he said slowly, the words rich with feeling. "It's weird, a Malfoy believing there's such a thing as 'enough'... but right now, I can't imagine myself wanting any more."  
  
Deep fulfillment swept over Harry, hearing Draco's words. The sensation of Draco's fingers on him was still clear, imprinted upon his nerves as though it would never leave, and his words settled just as deeply. He found himself unprepared for the depth of it; for all his fantasies and even the wildest of his hopes, there had been no way to anticipate this, how the soul could be sated with such simple contact... with such a little thing as having spoken truth to another person desperate to hear it.  
  
/I... Thank you, Harry./ Old words, exchanged at their first meeting, one of the first times Draco had ever thanked him for anything and meant it. Yet they were so much more than that.  
  
And to be satisfied with so few words spoken, too - Harry knew that there were many things they could say to each other, but what would those things be, except further elaboration? /I understand him,/ he thought, staring to Draco's eyes, memorizing their depths, how the light changed them from slate to storm and back again. /That's where the important things are,/ he thought absently.  
  
For a time they stood there, Draco bathed in the light from the high windows and Harry too, although to Harry's eyes Draco looked the more dazzling. For a time they stood there, motionless, under the eyes of the paintings and the patterns in the tapestry shifted like a dream.  
  
TBC. 


	6. Chapter Six

+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+  
(Ovid)  
  
CHAPTER SIX  
  
Faintly, he felt Draco's fingers on his face again, clasping his chin and unexpectedly cool in the warmth of the sun. Unresisting, he let the fingers turn his face to the side, trace minute patterns over his jaw. Let Draco's lips brush chastely against his cheek.  
  
Mind and body froze and Harry thought he might stand like this forever: locked in place, the sensation of Draco's mouth perpetually upon him. From the corner of his eye, he could see Draco's gray eyes alight with daring, amusement, and something else, but his brain wasn't functioning enough to identify that last, mysterious thing. And did he want to, at any rate?  
  
Draco broke the moment by turning away, but as he did, there was a smile on his face. Startled, Harry blinked. His mind moved sluggishly, Petrified by the moment and scrambling to catch up. He'd never understood Draco's smiles before, how much there was hidden behind them, and he struggled to figure out what this one meant.  
  
"I always knew what to make of you, Potter," Draco said, half to himself and half to Harry, who watched him. "Or," he amended after a moment, "I did, anyway, until recently." He turned back and peered closely at Harry, his gray eyes bright in the sunlight. "It's very frustrating for a Malfoy, you know, having to admit that they don't know who their enemies are - or who their friends are, for that matter. Or for a Malfoy to not know what he wants."  
  
"Would 'me' be enough?" Harry asked through a suddenly dry mouth.  
  
"'Me' has always been enough for a Malfoy," Draco said. A slight, faintly apologetic smile flickered at the corner of his lips. "Thinking too much about certain things is a terrible, terrible thing... I should never have agreed to go along with Ron's little plan. You never should have found those diaries, for that matter... No, I suppose that couldn't have been helped. I should have simply told Ron to go and screw himself - wait, I think I've said these things already. But, you know, it helps to say them... sort of telling myself 'I told you so.'"  
  
"I thought Malfoys didn't regret anything," Harry said lightly.  
  
"Oh, we don't," Draco assured him. "Mostly, we become irritated with the thought that something could have been done so much better. And then we obsess over it a bit, consider it carefully..." The expression in Draco's eyes had something of both obsession and consideration in it, and Harry fought against a shiver. "And now I find that, well, there are so many other ways I wish I could do this - sweep you off your feet or make dramatic protestations of undying love, or some other dramatic nonsense. But the truth is, I *can't* do either of those things. This isn't one of those stupid Witch Weekly romances, you know."  
  
"I figured that out for myself, thanks," Harry said, unable to keep an edge of irritation from his voice, "and I thought that we - that we were just going to let things happen." He took a couple of halting steps, tried not to wince as his traitorous left leg froze in protest. "And I don't exactly expect to be swept off my feet - and I would probably hit you if you tried to do that kneeling bit." /And I would, too/ he thought fiercely.  
  
"Ah, but what if *I* wanted *you* to sweep *me* off my feet?" Draco asked with a sly look and a grin.  
  
The question demanded no more answer than a smile, and Harry gave it freely.  
  
"That was easy," Draco said. Again, he smiled, and there was honesty in it. The gray eyes were utterly open, evanescent in the sunlight. "You know, there used to be a time when I hated your guts, and a time when I resented the hell out of you, and a time when I would have given anything to have sex with you... But there was never a time when I felt like this."  
  
Harry's mouth and brain felt like cotton. /There used to be a time when I hated your guts... when I resent the hell out of you... when I would have given anything to have sex with you./ But. Uncertain desire tugged at him, and Harry thought guiltily of dreams that had left him feverish and confused. /But there was never a time when I felt like this./ And he had to ask, the words rough and crude to his ears, "Like what?"  
  
Unexpectedly, Draco shook his head. Yet the smile was still there. "There *aren't* words for it. Leave me that much, okay?"  
  
And what could he do but nod? /There aren't words for it./ And that was true.  
  
  
He wondered exactly how it was those simple words could have released him - later, when he had time for such thoughts again, he would continue to wonder. It had been a concession to admit that Draco had no words for their relationship, and that he didn't either... but it had not been one that had been humbling, or that had defeated him. Instead, it allowed him to spend hours doing what he had never thought possible: talking, laughing, being with Draco Malfoy.  
  
He watched as Draco described, with all his old theatrics, how Pansy Parkinson had taken a nosedive into one of the carnivorous rose bushes during forbidden extracurricular flying sessions in their first year. Recalled the torture of getting up for midnight Astronomy lessons in January. Read parts of Snape's diaries with reverence and sadness, and a belated realization of what Severus had meant to Draco.  
  
"The difficulty in being the outsider who is always right," Severus had written under his entry for March 9 in the second year of the diary, "is that people automatically assume your opinions to be tainted by disillusionment, jealousy, disenfranchisement, and a host of other ills. Naturally, I see *their* opinions as being tainted by prejudice, self-satisfaction, and the inevitable hubris that comes with believing one has the lion's share of power. I suppose I could remedy my own ills by attempting to become 'one of the gang,' so to speak, but then my motives would be questioned. 'What *could* the ex-Death Eater and human bat possibly want?' Fine. Let them question me. Ultimately they'll never like the answers they receive, when they find out that my answers to their questions were the right ones."  
  
Harry listened as Draco described some of his talks with Severus, not hearing the words so much as he was simply listening to Draco's voice, the rise and fall and inflections of it. He let it flow over him, reveling in the moment as he had reveled in few things for such a long time. It was like flight, being carried along on Draco's slowly growing enthusiasm, being borne on thermals up and down, coasting on them without effort. And again he marveled that he could be so easy in Draco's presence, laughing, feeling himself freer than he had been in years.  
  
/There aren't words for it./  
  
Somehow, accepting that made things easier. Harry wasn't precisely sure how that was - after all, he had spent most of his life *not* accepting the inevitable. In his eyes, acceptance had been the same thing as resignation, and resignation always kept overtones of his old closet, of long hopeless days and frigid nights. Magic had brought a knowledge, fresh and startling, that he didn't have to accept the reality of a locked door, of gravity, of his domineering relations, and ultimately of Voldemort and the evil he'd sought to perpetrate.  
  
/There aren't words for it./   
  
The thought didn't bother him as he turned it over. It was... liberating, he decided, to simply *feel* it, whatever 'it' was, without worrying about how to define it with words. /Maybe they haven't invented it./  
  
The notion had so completely caught him up that he didn't notice the changes: the odd stirring in a supposedly vacant hall, Draco's sudden agitation, the distant crash of a china vase on a marble floor.  
  
Harry barely had time to register it: the doors of the study flew open, cracking back against the wall hard enough to splinter wood; there was a flurry of black robes, topped by blurred, determined faces; and a half-second before he could pull his wand and react, a shout of "Accio wand!" rolled across the room like thunder.  
  
His wand leapt from the pocket of his robe, tearing a hole in the fabric, and streaked across the room. It landed in the outstretched hand of a tall, broad-shouldered Auror, who turned and gave it to Lavender Brown, who had stepped out from behind him.  
  
Lavender Brown. And the tall Auror - Fortius, what his last name was Harry didn't know. Another woman, lithe and cold with short-cropped hair and a piece of her right ear missing... Harry was a moment in placing her name. Undine, or something similar. The three of them were Ron's team. Or had been, at any rate. The three of them moved around to Draco, circling him, wolflike and silent in their movements.  
  
"Blinker!" Draco shouted. The Aurors stiffened.  
  
Blinker appeared with a whipcrack. His huge eyes took in Fudge and the knot of Aurors, Draco standing in the midst of them, and Harry off to the side. Harry could see his own reflection in the massive pupils, not obscured by the terror that regret that filled them.  
  
"I is sorry, Master - Blinker is so, so sorry," the house-elf stammered before Draco could open his mouth. "You know I is not allowed to tell you hand-before about the Ministry persons, sir, when they is coming to see you. And I know I's going to have to shut my ears in the oven door again, sir, but Blinker swears it - he swears it! - that he would have told Master-sir about the Ministry, if he could."  
  
"Just go, Blinker," Draco said. "Forget about the damn oven."  
  
Blinker seemed to want to protest this, but vanished at a furious look from his master. The echo of the house-elf's disappearance faded out into charged silence, broken only by the rustling of robes and, to Harry's ears, the thunderous beat of his heart. He bit his lip as a twinge of pain shot up and down his thigh and tried to force himself to relax as the silence dragged on.   
  
"I never thought I'd live to see such a thing," Fudge said, his voice shaking with a fury that did not reach his eyes. No, *those* glittered with cold triumph in the flabby redness of Fudge's face, and darted wetly between Harry and Draco. Harry forced himself to stay still and not turn to look at Draco; he could see Draco from the very corner of his vision, and the pale figure was absolutely still. /Stay like that,/ Harry told himself, watching Fudge as the Minister looked back and forth, moistening his lips.  
  
After a moment to allow his pronouncement to sink in, Fudge continued: "I would never have thought it - two of our heroes in the war and one of them a hero from his birth, an inspiration to all our people in the darkest times... the other a recipient of our highest honor - our highest honor! - and both of them caught consorting with a known Death Eater..."  
  
Harry's heart clenched at Fudge's words. /Ron!/ "Where Ron?" he demanded, the words flying from his mouth before he could stop them. "What have you done with him?" Suddenly, Ron's joking pronouncements about an official inquiry didn't seem so funny. As if they ever had been.  
  
"Oh, it's not what I *have* done to him," Fudge said coldly, but with a certain amount of relish. "It's what I *will* have done to him. As an Auror, he knows what the penalties are for what he's done - and I can personally assure you that he *will* pay them. And, as for you..." Fudge paused, pursing his lips thoughtfully, his eyes shining with a fanaticism that made Harry ill. "As for you, you will be confined to your rooms at Hogwarts - I will contact Professor McGonagall about having you removed from the teaching rotation. And guards, of course. For your own safety, naturally."  
  
There were too many, too many things happening. Harry missed the last of Fudge's words; fear for Ron, and for Draco whose pale face was now surrounded by the black shapes of the Aurors, gripped him. /He knows what the penalties are... and he will pay them./ -- those words still filled his ears. Denial chased after fear. /They won't do anything to Ron,/ he told himself fiercely, willing himself to believe it.  
  
But Draco... Involuntarily, Harry turned to look.  
  
He stood there, face painted over with Malfoy superiority, gray eyes utterly fearless. He caught Harry's gaze over Fortius's shoulder. And there, for a moment, was nothing of the man Harry had not yet gotten to know.  
  
But then Draco offered up a smile on those thin, bloodless lips, and it was half-mocking, half-sad.  
  
Harry struggled to form some reply - words, a smile to answer Draco's, a shrug, tears - and found that he could not. His body seemed detached from the rest of him, the part of him that could control it, and it was leaden, unresponsive.  
  
Fudge, who had been observing the byplay in his own silence, broke into Harry's concentration. He bustled over the Draco, radiating self-satisfaction and not a little vengeance. Although he could look Draco in the eyes directly, Draco still seemed to stare down at him from a great height, and for a moment Harry had the wild impression that Fudge would somehow give in, call off this nightmare, and go away.  
  
When Fudge broke his gaze, though, it was to step back and gesture for the Aurors to take Draco away. "Undine, you and Fortius take care of Mr. Malfoy... Ms. Brown, if you will?" He gestured to Lavender, who stepped around Fortius, her expression grim. She paced up to stand next to Harry, who saw that he could not catch her glance - that she was purposely avoiding it, despite the resoluteness of her stride. Fudge ignored this and said pleasantly, "Fortius, would you take care of... preparing Mr. Malfoy for transport?"  
  
"*Petrificus totalus!*" Draco's eyes barely had time to open wide before the spell hit him - his lips were parted, and Harry saw that they had opened to reflexively speak the countercurse. "Mobilarcorpus!" Fortius boomed, pointing his wand at Draco's helpless body, and that body, robes frozen almost comically in place, lifted up and began to move under Fortius's direction. The woman, Undine, fell into step behind the two, keeping her wand at the ready.  
  
It was on Harry's tongue to say that doing such a thing to a defenseless wizard was wrong, but he held himself back. /Why?/ he asked himself bitterly instead as Fortius's heavy footsteps faded into the anteroom. He heard the distant whip-snap of Blinker's appearance, the high, quavering question and Undine's terse reply.  
  
Harry felt fury welling up within him. It wasn't the cold anger that had seen him through the war and the deaths of friends, the disciplined and directed sort that had kept him alive enough to feel anything. No, it was burning hot, and blistered through him, the kind he remembered from a childhood left years behind - images of his aunt swelling up like a mutant blowfish raced through his head, thoughts of Cedric, thoughts of Ron after an accident had almost killed him - and he thought for a wild, irrational moment of going for his wand. It was right there, achingly close - he wouldn't have to even summon it, he could simply tackle Lavender, who was improbably shorter and lighter than he was, and take it from her.  
  
Except she was eyeing him speculatively, and was now saying, "Don't try it Harry. Please don't."  
  
For a moment she was a fellow Gryffindor, a year-mate, the girl who had lost her best friend in a Death Eater raid in Exeter. For a moment only, but it was enough for Harry to regain control of himself. Still, though, he wanted answers - and he suspected that Lavender, from the tense and deeply uncertain light in her eyes, wanted much the same from him.  
  
Fudge, at least, appeared to have everything he wanted, and he turned to face Harry with a bright, patronizing smile, the folds of his face draped in luxurious benignity. The man had gained weight since the conclusion of the war - it had been an ongoing process - and now he strutted up to Harry and Lavender, stuffed full of his own satisfaction.  
  
"Miss Brown will take you home by Portkey," Fudge told him, as if imparting a profound yet joyous secret. "In deference to you and your... reputation..," the slight lowering of his voice told Harry that Fudge was starting to view that somewhat dimly, "... she will be your only escort until a few more Aurors arrive to secure your rooms. And I will, of course, be keeping all of this out of the papers for as long as I can - like you, I have little desire to let the general public know that their great hero, the famed Harry Potter, their Boy Who Lived, is consorting with a known enemy and avowed Death Eater."  
  
"Somehow, I don't think the papers are going to be clear of that for long," Harry said coldly. Lavender made a soft, imploring noise, but Harry rode over her. "What are you going to do with Draco? And what are you going to do with Ron?"  
  
"Mr. Weasley has already been dealt with for the time being," Fudge spat. "As for Malfoy" - the name was uttered like the filthiest curse - "he will of course be going to where he *should* have gone years ago. The Ministry will be rescinding his exile in light of these recent developments. He *will* be going to Azkaban to join the rest of the Death Eater scum there as food for the Dementors. And you... Mr. Harry Potter..." Fudge's voice went cold, dead, and so like Voldemort that Harry wanted to attack, "You may be able to get out of this unscathed. You might get your teaching job back... but I would think about choosing an advocate to represent you in the Ministry. Choose him or her wisely - you'll need another Ludo Bagman, I think, to get you out of this."  
  
Ludo Bagman: object lesson. A Death Eater who had eluded justice after Voldemort's first rising only to be caught during the second, caught running top-secret Ministry messages. Sentenced to Azkaban for a life that did not last much longer than a few months before a few allegedly rogue dementors had gotten into his cell. Despite Bagman's spectacular and hideous death, Harry knew that it had stuck in Fudge's craw that the man had been able to escape detection for so long, had fooled all of them with apparently little effort.  
  
"And be glad you never got to draw your wand," Fudge added as Lavender touched Harry's elbow to steer him out of the room. "If you had," Fudge continued, undeterred, "I would have added aggravated assault and drawing your wand with intent to harm to your list of charges."  
  
The last words, uttered nearly as a shout, for Lavender and Harry were by now in the anteroom: "And the list is long enough!"  
  
  
The Portkey was, Harry saw, the same one Ron had used to transport them to the forest just this morning. Looking upward, he saw that the sun was edging toward mid-afternoon. Had it only been a few hours, then? He eyed the beaten-up cowboy hat with suspicion.  
  
"Take it," Lavender said. "We only have thirty seconds or so."  
  
Harry obeyed. As the wait dragged interminably, he opened his mouth to ask, "Why?"  
  
The question was distorted by the pull of the Portkey as it snatched body and word through space and spat them back out in Hogsmeade. "Why?" still hung in the air between them once they arrived.  
  
"You wouldn't understand it," Lavender said flatly. She stowed the Portkey in her robes and straightened them. An absent hand touched her hair, a gesture Harry remembered from their schooldays: she was nervous. "You wouldn't understand it," Lavender repeated, "and even if you could, I wouldn't explain it. Now come on - I can't guarantee that Fudge has kept to his word and not leaked the news of you and... Malfoy to the press. We need to get to Hogwarts fast."  
  
"We were friends, Lavender," Harry pursued as they began to move through the back alleys in the direction of the school. "What kind of Gryffindor would do this - betray a friend? A *superior*?" Ron had headed up her team, Harry knew. "What did you do? Go straight to Fudge the moment Ron asked for Draco to be brought into the diary investigation? Or did you just wait until you thought he and Draco were getting too friendly?"  
  
"What kind of Gryffindor would consort with a Death Eater?" she asked in turn, the question low and furious. The look she gave him from underneath the shelf of brown hair was just as scathing. "What kind of Gryffindor would *help* a friend do that? *Why* would a Gryffindor do either one of those things?"  
  
"You wouldn't understand it."  
  
"So we're equal then." Lavender gripped her robes and stalked on, Harry right beside her despite the ache in his leg. Those were the last words spoken between the two of them until they arrived at Hogwarts and saw a familiar figure rushing toward them.  
  
"Harry!" Celeste Sinistra darted up, robes swishing in her haste. The heels of her shoes clacked rapidly on the floor like machine-gun fire. Her wand was gripped in a white-knuckled hand and she looked ready to use it, but upon seeing Lavender, Sinistra reluctantly pocketed it. "Harry, thank Merlin you're here," she said between agitated breaths. "We just now got an owl from the Minister - " Her eyes drifted down to the prominently displayed Auror badge on Lavender's robes, and her breath caught. "I see then that it's true."  
  
"Yes, it is." Harry felt his voice drop, and he was reminded forcibly of Hogwarts at night - the echoing, listening hallways that were at once too small and too large, silent and lifeless but uncannily aware. And this was daylight still, with the sounds of the castle during daytime - students shouting in the distance, footsteps, Filch snarling in some nearby hidden passageway. "Could I see Minerva?"  
  
"Unfortunately, she has left for the Ministry offices in London," Sinistra said. She had begun to regain her composure and when she spoke again, her voice had regained its typical unruffled calm. "She will be taking over your classes once she gets back, though, until we can find a replacement. I'm sorry, Harry, but she also said... She said that we were to accommodate the Aurors as best we can."  
  
"Of course. You don't need to apologize for it." Harry sighed at the resigned expression on Celeste's face, and wished that he didn't have to say such a thing. "I just... I just need to go to my rooms." God, he was tired suddenly. His mind had the course to his rooms plotted out already - he could walk the path in his sleep, had done it on occasion, and right now his leg ached with unrelenting fire. He wanted to detach from all of this, badly, and wanted the distance of even a troubled sleep. He could feel himself swaying where he stood.  
  
The day was suddenly very heavy.  
  
Lavender stared at him, and the stony expression on her face was so far removed from the one Harry remembered from Hogwarts. Was she wondering if he was trying to fake her out? /You wouldn't understand./  
  
"You best go to your office first," Sinistra said with her characteristic mildness. Despite her tone, there was worry in her dark eyes. "Dr. Granger is in there waiting for you - she has been since early afternoon." She turned to examine Lavender, who met her scrutiny with defiance, although there was something of the disapproving teacher in Sinistra's gaze. "I assume," Sinistra said at length, "that Professor Potter will be allowed to visit his office to gather anything he might need? He still needs to finish grading those fourth-year Slytherin essays."  
  
Lavender opened her mouth, closed it without making a sound, and nodded grudgingly.  
  
Harry barely stood still long enough to thank Celeste. /Hermione!/ Some of his weariness lifted as he limped to his office, a thankfully short distance away. Lavender stuck close by him, silent as they reached the office door, which was shut. Tentatively, Harry reached for the lock - had he warded it before leaving it last night? He couldn't remember - and was surprised when it opened easily.  
  
"Harry!" Hermione jumped up from the chair she'd been in, hand flying to her mouth. "Oh, God, Harry!"  
  
She took one, two, three quick and staggering steps until she could fling herself into his arms. Harry caught her weight against him, slightly uncomfortable with hugging his best friend's wife - dismissed it with the fierce thought that she needed this, that maybe *he* needed it - and tried to think of something to say. All he could come up with were soft, soothing nonsense words that failed to reassure him.  
  
Hermione pulled away, scrubbing her face with the cuff of her robe. Flushing a bit, Harry fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, which she took with a wavery, grateful smile and a "thank you." The words were hoarse, roughened by tears. "Thank you," she said again, more clearly this time. "I'm sorry... I'm a terrible mess, aren't I?" She didn't even appear to notice Lavender.  
  
"What have you found out?" Harry asked softly, wondering at why he was keeping his voice so low. Lavender was likely to think he was trying to initiate Hermione into the conspiracy, if she wasn't already. "Has Miner - er, Professor McGonagall found out anything?"  
  
"Ron asked for her as his advocate with the Ministry," Hermione said around the muffling folds of the handkerchief. "That's why she's in London now, to consult with Arthur and Molly... and then, oh Harry - and then she's going to Azkaban."  
  
Harry's stomach clenched in reflexive, icy dread. He felt the fugitive coldness of a Dementor's fingertips at the back of his neck, raising the hairs there. For a brief moment he heard his mother screaming, his father shouting, and green obscured his vision. "Azkaban," he echoed dully when he found his voice again. "Why?"  
  
"Minerva said Fudge was calling it 'protective custody.'" The derision in Hermione's voice told him exactly what she thought of Fudge's choice of words. Her gaze slid over to Lavender, who was hanging back by the door, and hardened. Harry wondered if she knew, or at least suspected, Lavender's role in her husband's arrest. "I keep thinking about the time when they took Hagrid to Azkaban because of that basilisk - and I keep thinking about how frightened Hagrid was..." The words were trembling as fiercely as Hermione. "But he's there, in custody, and that's all I know for sure. They're not even letting Molly or Arthur see him - and Arthur has Ministry clearance! I think Fudge is worried they're going to break him out, like Crouch did...  
  
"They won't let me see him," Hermione continued hopelessly. A strange smile caught up the edges of her lips. "I don't know how he is, if he's safe - of *course* he's not safe... I can't think about this - I should be trying to formulate some kind of defense. I should be *helping* him, not - not *blubbering* like some helpless little girl. But..." Her voice trailed off as words knotted up in her throat, and Harry felt his heart convulse just looking at her. "I can't do it, Harry. Not now."  
  
In all the years he had known Hermione, he had never seen her this unhinged. An image of her during the war came to him: her hair pulled back neatly in a bun, brown eyes intense in a calm face as she pored over coded parchments. The perpetual chaos of Ministry officials swirled around her, and she had been the calmness in the center of it.  
  
And so it was difficult to reconcile that image with the puffy-faced, exhausted woman hunched over in her chair. Her hair had returned to its twelve-year-old puffiness, wild and tangled around skin made pink with tears. Her left hand, clutching one of Harry's handkerchiefs, shook - whether it was with the force of her grip of exhaustion, he couldn't tell. He was staring at her so hard, trying to come up with something of his own to say, that he missed her first soft-spoken words.  
  
"Malfoy," she whispered, lips twisting around the name, strangling it. "This is his fault."  
  
"No!" Harry said. The look Hermione turned on him should have incinerated him where he stood, but it did not and he forged on. "If you're going to blame Draco, Hermione, blame me too."  
  
"I want to Harry," Hermione told him miserably. She barked a short, harsh laugh. "I've spent the entire morning trying to hate you, ever since Ron didn't come home and Minerva owled me to tell me what was happening... The first thing I thought was, 'I'm going to kill him as soon as I see him.' But... I knew I couldn't do that." A sharp breath punctuated the sentence, and Hermione paused before continuing: "To tell you the truth, Harry, I couldn't understand why Ron would do this. He knew it was dangerous... he knew what Fudge would do to him if he ever found out. But he did it anyway. And now... now we're both paying for it. Why? Why is that?"  
  
Her words tore into him. "I didn't want him to," Harry said, desperately trying to defend himself. "I told him again and again not to do it, that I wasn't worth what would happen to him. I'm still not worth it, Hermione. I'll *never* be worth it."  
  
"Of course you would," Hermione whispered sadly. The smile she turned on him was so deeply grief-ridden it snarled around his heart and made it difficult to think past the ache in it. "To Ron, you're always worth it... And that's why he did it." Wonderingly now: "That's why... I don't know why I didn't see it."  
  
"Don't feel bad, Hermione," Harry said, wincing at the awkward words. Inwardly, though, he thought /I didn't see it either./ And no matter how many times Ron had told him that he didn't mind the danger, that it was worth it to see Harry happy, that *Harry* was worth the danger... He hadn't seen it.  
  
Just as he hadn't seen the signs of those Aurors coming for them, not until it was too late, with Draco unable to defend himself and his own wand torn away. Just as he hadn't seen the danger until it was too late, he hadn't fully understood the reason or depth of Ron's sacrifice. The realization struck him with the force of something heavy and unforgiving, the flat of a sword blade across his ribs, and he railed bitterly against it.  
  
Some things could not be accepted.  
  
TBC.  
  
Notes:  
  
1.) In case you can't tell, I subscribe to the Ever-So-Evil!Bagman theory. If you don't, just indulge me for the purposes of narration.  
  
2.) The carnivorous rose bushes are not my own invention, but were inspired by something else. The original carnivorous rose (in the singular) belongs to the TTDSDG crew from the Gundam Wing fandom, a land I used to frequent quite often. Was feeling nostalgic today.  
  
3.) There are two more chapters planned for this story, and then at least one more fic after this, dealing with all of the Ministry junk as well as Snape's diaries. I'm sorry, but I like Sadist!Fudge, and he was just too insistent to be ignored... as was Severus. 


	7. Chapter Seven

A/N: Apologies for the excessive length between updates. Life has been wretchedly busy, and desire to write fanfic rather low. Let this be a lesson to you: never place anything (and I mean ANYTHING) above your own sanity, however doubtful that sanity may be. It isn't worth it.  
  
+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+  
(Ovid )  
  
CHAPTER SEVEN  
  
Three days later, Hermione was still pale and on edge. And Harry had to admit he wasn't much better.  
  
His room had become more like the cell Fudge had so generously not given him. Someone had locked the window from the outside - he had discovered this late the first night - and sealed it with a complicated warding spell. He recognized it from the old days, and it was the kind of spell any thinking person would get a curse-breaker to unravel, and thus the kind of spell that if someone had broken it... That someone would be in Azkaban, right next to Draco Malfoy and Ron Weasley.  
  
/You should be in there with them,/ Harry told himself caustically. It was the hundredth time he had said this, but each repetition did not make it easier. The thought still burned like acid. /Your best friend and... and Draco./ And he could still not fix on what to call Draco, who he could see in his mind's eye - in a black place, fading against the shadows, and the Dementors behind him, chill and awful. It was strange... he felt no real fear for Ron, mostly fury on behalf of his best friend, and grief for Hermione, but the Ron he had come to know was reckless and capable, and had always come out on top.  
  
The last memories he had of Draco, until recently, were of him surrounded by crowds of hostile wizards, saved from being cursed into oblivion only by the presence of Aurors and a Ministry intent on reasserting its own authority. He shook his head, trying to banish the image of that last trial, the sound of the shouts echoing in his ears, but the memories chased him from one end of his room to the other. Even the increasing, protesting heat in his leg could not keep him still.  
  
"Stop pacing!" Hermione snapped from her corner. Her hands were still locked around a handkerchief, one that had been pressed into repeated service over the past few days. "You're going to drive me out of what's left of the rest of my mind," she continued irritably, "and I *need* my mind."  
  
Harry shrugged by way of apology, but did not stop. Thought drove him on, fueling both nervous energy and the awful curdling sensation in his stomach. Minerva would be here soon, he reminded himself, returned from her trip to the Ministry - and Azkaban, Hermione had said, if they would let her. Molly and Arthur were still in London, Harry was given to understand, and would be staying there until Ron's trial. /Or summary execution,/ a dark voice in the back of Harry's head whispered.  
  
/Don't think about that./ Harry tried to think of all the scrapes he and Ron had survived, both as children and later after the war had claimed their adult lives, and defined so much of them. He remembered when Ron would vanish for weeks at a time, off on some super-secret Ministry thing, and resurface with a few scars and the same old smirk, alongside a quick, "Hey, Harry, long time no see." /This is the same thing, and you'll see him soon./  
  
And he could almost see this now, hear Ron's footsteps coming quickly down the hall, the door opening, Hermione bounding gracelessly across the room, getting swept up in a full-armed bear hug by her husband.  
  
But.  
  
So there *was* fear after all.  
  
There was a clatter behind the door, words raised in brief protest - Harry felt a wild flux of hope, Hermione's head snapped up - and then Minerva McGonagall's harder voice overrode them. Hermione surged to her feet as though electrocuted. Harry stopped pacing. The door ground on its hinges like the door to a prison cell, then swung open.  
  
Minerva McGonagall, Headmistress of Hogwarts, swept through. It hit Harry, oddly, how little she had changed over intervening years; her hair had a touch more gray in it, perhaps, and the lines around her eyes were deeper, and perhaps the set of her jaw was harder than even it was in earlier times. But her eyes were keen as a cat's, and saw things most students - and former students - would prefer that she not. It was this sharp, blade-like gaze she turned on Harry now, although a slight smile made her regard easier to endure.  
  
"I hope you are well, Mr. Potter?" she asked. There was exhaustion in her voice, although she covered it well. Minerva was not the kind of woman given to revealing much of weakness to anyone, something for which Harry was now fervently grateful -- *someone* needed to be in control here. He certainly wasn't. Something in Minerva's expression showed she was aware of this, and her tone softened as she said, "I have been trying to convince Fudge to end this idiot 'temporary confinement' issue - he knows it's a fool notion almost as well as I do, but I think that because it *is* a fool notion he clings to it."  
  
Hermione snorted. "The entire thing is a fool notion," she said bitterly. Despite the acidity of her tone, the red-rimmed gaze she turned upon Minerva was strangely beseeching. Harry remembered thinking, a long time ago, that Hermione Granger would die before she begged anything from *anyone*, and here she was, gripping her handkerchief and staring at Minerva with unnerving desperation. "Have you heard anything?" she asked in a low, frantic voice. "Have they told you *anything*? Can I go see him?"  
  
"To answer the first, yes," Minerva said. "As for the second, they have, and the third, no."  
  
A heavy sigh escaped Hermione's lips and she crumpled back into her chair.  
  
"I won't sugarcoat this," Minerva said grimly. "The respective situations of Mr. Weasley and.... Mr. Malfoy are not good. The Minister wants Ron up on charges of 'consorting with the enemy with treasonous intent', and Draco for something he hasn't figured out yet. There may be a retrial, only they'll add the charge of corruption and espionage to his list - corrupting an agent of the Ministry and using the remission of his death sentence to exile in order to do some spying for whatever fragments of Voldemort are left." Sarcasm twisted Minerva's voice at that last.  
  
The small sound from Hermione's corner might have been a sob, but Harry could not tell through the awful thundering in his ears. Despite the racing beat of his heart, he felt incredibly light-headed, and his vision swam into dimness. Weightlessness hit him, and he flashed back for a moment to when he had fallen out of that tower, sixty endless feet to the ground, and the strange disembodied exultation of flying - until the hard ground rushed up to catch him...  
  
Even the memory of that impact was enough to make him snatch desperately after breath, and when he came back to himself, he was vaguely aware that he was sweating and still breathing shallowly. His head and leg ached, pounding in the same merciless rhythm. Minerva and Hermione were staring at him with twin expressions of concern, but all he could do in response was fumble for reassuring words and collapse onto his chair.  
  
"I will need to know everything," Minerva said in a low voice, glancing at Hermione momentarily. "I need to know what your relationship is to Draco, and why Ron was apparently willing to arrange meetings between the two of you. I need complete honesty, Harry - Fudge says that they may be putting either Ron or Draco under Veritaserum at some point soon, and I would rather not have that happen with you, needless to say either of them, if I can manage it. If you speak honestly, I may be able to get Ron to corroborate your testimony." She paused. "I do not know what I can do for Draco, or that I *should* do anything for that matter... but I will get as many of you out of this mess as I can." A crooked smile now. "It seems to be a habit of mine."  
  
Harry fought with himself whether or not to say something - surely, surely Minerva's words demanded some kind of response. But he did not know what to make of her tone, whether she was joking with them, or making an observation, or else saying it to cover something hidden. She *had* gotten them, particularly the Gryffindors, out of more than one uncomfortable place... and now, with the will of the Ministry, and Fudge's own insistence upon following the letter of the law, she was prepared to do it again. He wanted to thank her, to apologize, but the words fell flat and useless, and he found that, even if he had wanted to, he could not have spoken them - there was a catch in his throat, suddenly, and breath was difficult enough.  
  
"How are Molly and Arthur?" Hermione asked, perhaps more to fill the silence than anything. Harry barely kept back a sigh of relief.  
  
"As well as can be expected," Minerva answered, "although I think they would do better for seeing you."  
  
Hermione nodded, staring fixedly down at her fingers and the handkerchief knotted through them. She muttered something Harry could not make out, then, louder: "What about Harry, though?"  
  
"What about me?" Harry jumped at hearing his name, was not prepared to see Hermione lift her head to look at him, the expression on her face one of pity and concern. /For me?/ He dismissed the notion as foolish. Minerva, too, was looking at him now.  
  
"I don't like the idea of you staying here by yourself," Hermione said very slowly and carefully, as though guessing exactly what he had been thinking. Her tone was not very far removed from the one he remembered well from their school days; it was the one she used to explain things to Ron and him, when she thought they were a few too many steps behind her. But her expression was not contemptuous; rather, it was desperately fearful now, and that tears hovered. "I feel like... I feel like if I let you out of my sight, Fudge is going to take you, too."  
  
"You needn't worry about that," Minerva said grimly. Her lined, formidable face hardened, and she drew herself up. "You'll be coming with us, Harry, no matter what the Aurors here have to say about it. Hermione, go to your rooms and get your things. Harry, you get yourself together quickly, for you must leave with me."  
  
It was all happening too fast, but Harry found himself moving as in a daze: nod, move to the closet to get his trunk, place it on the bed, begin to put things in it - shirts, pants, two sets of robes. Don't think, remember packing for Hogwarts at the end of summer, a ritual of freedom: socks and shoes wedged into the corner, underwear tucked into a pocket, toothbrush and things in their own bag, wrapped in a towel. Shut it, press down, flip the locks, seal it with a spell to keep it from exploding on the train ride, wonder anything had been forgotten.  
  
He heard voices in the hallway, Minerva's and Lavender's, both raised in argument. Lavender's was raised, rather, and almost shrill, but Minerva's was steady as ever and, even more importantly, as firm and incontrovertible as it had always been. Her students, Harry realized for the hundredth time - it still struck him afresh, every time he thought this - were *always* her students, whether they taught for her, or were Aurors... or were exiles or criminals or prisoners. / I can do for Draco, or that I *should* do anything for that matter... but I will get as many of you out of this mess as I can./  
  
"I'm sorry, Headmistress," Lavender was saying how, voice reaching for authority but coming up only with desperation. "I'm under orders: Harry has to stay here until the Ministry sends for him. The moment they do, I'll send him on myself, but not until then."  
  
"And I say that I don't want Mr. Potter here, taking up space and the house elves' valuable time when he could very well be somewhere else, and being of real use to not only myself, but to Ms. Weasley and her husband."  
  
There was a long, painful silence. Minerva had placed that nicely; Lavender would be thinking about Ron, her former colleague - her leader, by all rights, Harry supposed. He wondered if Lavender had seen Hermione at all after this had happened, what they might have said to each other. /You didn't just turn in a 'traitor,'/ Harry told Lavender silently. /You turned in Hermione's husband. Your friend./ Would that knowledge make a difference, though? He had seen the fury in Lavender's eyes, and that in her voice, when they had spoken together just a few days ago. /What kind of Gryffindor would do this? Why?/  
  
He had not been able to give her the answer then, not knowing it or not wanting to believe it. Now, though, he stepped cautiously to the door, squaring his shoulders. Looking around it, he saw Lavender standing defiantly before Minerva, dark eyes flashing, and Minerva's back, straight and resolute. He could picture the expression on the Headmistress's face.  
  
Lavender saw him over Minerva's shoulder, and her concentration broke. "Harry!" she snapped. "Get back in there - Ministry orders."  
  
"No," Harry said quietly, which caused Lavender to stare at him in mute outrage. Minerva looked over her shoulder at him, her face impassive. "Lavender, I'm sorry - you can report this to Fudge if you want - but I'm going with Minerva."  
  
"This is only going to make things worse for you," Lavender said. There was no worry in her voice, but a threat under a thin veil of restraint. "I can promise you that, at least - and I don't think it'll go much easier with Ron, or Draco either."  
  
Harry made himself not react to that; she was watching for a reaction, he saw, her gaze narrowed and focused. Instead, he asked, "Why are you doing this? I asked you once before, and you said I wouldn't understand. Well... maybe I *would*, if you told me."  
  
Lavender stepped around Minerva, who silently moved out of the way. She stood close to Harry, slightly taller than him, and when she spoke, her voice was a hot, bitter whisper: "Death Eaters killed my best friend. She was just *there*, just someone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - and it doesn't matter whether or not Draco Malfoy killed her, Harry, because he was still one of them, and he'll always be one of them. Even if he didn't do it himself, he would have, if he could." Her voice fell lower, fiercer. "Do you think I'd forget something like that? What I can't understand is how you could."  
  
/Parvati and Dean, dead in Exeter./ Of course Lavender wouldn't have forgotten. So many of their housemates had died. Three from their own year, some before and some after, and friends, most of them, others acquaintances and little more. But Parvati... Harry remembered piercing, irritating laughter and speculation on boys, hairstyles, clothes, music going far into the night. Of course Lavender wouldn't have forgotten.  
  
But he had not forgotten either. /How to say it, though?/  
  
"I haven't forgotten anything," he said after a moment. Lavender stared at him with a mixture of disbelief and outrage painted upon her face. "I know you'd believe the opposite to be true," he continued, "but I can tell you that it's *not.* There's a lot more here, Lavender, than you'd like to think-" He saw her head snap back at the admonishment, as though he were a teacher and she a fumbling first year "-and there's more to Draco than you give him credit."  
  
Lavender opened her mouth to say something, but Minerva broke in with a sharp, "Mr. Potter? Our train is leaving shortly, and we can't afford to miss it."  
  
Those words settled it. Lavender stepped back - and only now did Harry see that she had a firm grip on her wand, so tight the skin about her knuckles was pale and tense - offering her fiercest glare, but little more. He nodded to her, glanced away to find where he had placed his rolling trunk, there, very close by, took it, and began to walk away. He could feel her gaze pressing down on him, heavy and condemning. /Do you think I'd forget something like that?/  
  
/What I don't understand is how you could./  
  
Hermione was waiting for them at the end of the hallway, an untidily packed overnight bag by her feet. The light spilling in through the open door was pale, and she was a very dark shadow against it. Once more Harry wondered if she had seen Lavender, wondered if it would be bad form to ask at a time like this. /Maybe,/ he thought absurdly, /we could compare notes./  
  
He never did get the courage to ask that question, not on the short horseless-carriage ride to the train station, or on the train ride itself. Muggle London loomed before them hours later, the space and time between it and Hogwarts having been broken by no unnecessary conversation; Hermione had fallen into an exhausted sleep, and Minerva did not seem inclined to talk, and Harry stared at the countryside rolling by outside the window.  
  
The rhythmic swaying and clacking of the train had lulled him somewhat, and he found himself disconcerted by the mad crush of humanity milling about the Muggle side of Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters. Somewhat numb from the shock, he followed Minerva and Hermione through the crowd, gripping his trunk for dear life, trying to figure out how it was he felt so unprepared and out of place. /How long has it been, anyway, since you've been to London?/ Too long, was the answer; Hogsmeade had begun to seem a booming metropolis. /Don't think about that... Just keep your eyes on Minerva's hat,/ he commanded himself, for his old Professor, in deference to Muggle fashion, had donned a wide-brimmed, swooping red creation, decorated with a plume of ostrich feathers. The plumes waved and bobbed, visible far above the heads of the rest of the crowd, and Harry's gaze followed their every movement with desperate attention.  
As it turned out, Minerva and the plumes were faithful guides. After three changes of train in the underground and two Portkeys to the wrong Ministry branch offices, they found themselves in the proper one, a sterile square office in Ministry Headquarters, and Harry found himself in the bone-crushing embrace of Mrs. Weasley.  
  
"They won't tell us anything!" Molly sobbed into Harry's shoulder. Her grip tightened with each word until Harry felt his ribs creak; over Molly's shoulder, he saw Arthur smile wanly at him, eyes full of worry. After a moment, Molly pulled back and absently began to straighten Harry's robes. "They won't tell us," she murmured brokenly, the words more or less a refrain of the past few days. "All Fudge does is tell us he won't speak to anyone except Minerva - and laugh to himself. He does that a lot."  
  
"He'll talk to you," Minerva said. Her voice was soft, but steel edged it. "Where is he?"  
  
"His secretary said he's been out on meetings all morning," Arthur said, coming up to shake Harry's hand. His hand felt cold and damp with nervous sweat, and Harry had to fight the urge to wipe his own hand on his robes. "Personally, I think he's hiding; he knows we're not going to take no answer much longer."  
  
"And how are you, dear?" Molly was asking Hermione.  
  
"As well as can be expected, I suppose," Hermione answered, offering her mother-in-law a tremulous smile. "Harry has helped me out a lot."  
  
Harry could only boggle at this. *He* had been as much of a wreck as Hermione had been. In the three days of his "incarceration" (as Hermione called it), Lavender had allowed them brief visits, during which Harry had done little more than worry out loud, for courtesy's sake mostly worrying out loud about Ron, or offering absentminded reassurances. His worrying about Draco, though, had been kept to himself, and now, looking at Molly and Arthur, he decided that that was where it was going to stay for the next little while, if he could possibly help it.  
  
/How do you explain to the parents of your best friend that the reason why he's in Azkaban is the man who was one of those people would could have killed your children? How do you do that? How do you explain it to *yourself*?/  
  
Molly and Hermione were talking in low voices and Arthur was conferring with Minerva over some point of wizarding world law, leaving Harry to wrestle with his problem by himself. /Like it's always been,/ he thought wryly, /more or less./ He fought down an image of Draco as it rose before him again, the same one he had seen since his arrest: Draco in a dark room, huddled against a looming blackness, the Dementors hovering about him, clawed hands reaching out to drag him down into the abyss. Desperately, he tried to swallow, feeling fear tighten about his chest. /Don't think about this. Keep it down./  
  
There was a sharp change in the conversation now, and Harry became aware of a new voice added to the mix: Periwinkle Pander, Fudge's secretary, who was explaining something in an oil-smooth voice. Arthur's sharp, "Don't give me that again! We want to speak to the Minister, and we want to speak with him right now" cut her off.  
  
'He's very sorry," Periwinkle Pander said, "but he is quite busy today."  
  
"I daresay he won't be too busy when you tell him I've arrived," Minerva McGonagall said. Periwinkle's eyes widened at this. "Now, girl, would you be so kind as to tell the Minister that the counsel for Ronald Weasley wishes to speak with him?"  
  
Periwinkle squeaked an unintelligible reply and backed out of the room, nearly tripping over her robes. She had just turned around to close the door behind her when a sharp grunt from Minerva caught her half-reaching for the doorknob.  
  
"And miss?"  
  
"Yes ma'am?"  
  
"Kindly inform the Minister that the counsel for Draco Malfoy is here as well."  
  
"What!" Molly's screech sent Periwinkle darting down the hall without a backward glance, robe rippling out behind her. "Minerva, what is this about? Draco Malfoy!" Her plump, reddened face had gone deathly pale. Arthur's had as well the moment Draco's name had fallen from Minerva's lips. "Draco Malfoy!" Molly repeated, nearly tripping over the name. "What is the *meaning* of this? What does he to do with Ron?"  
  
/He *really* didn't tell them anything,/ Harry realized dully. Close on the heels of that came the realization that he would not be able to keep Draco to himself much longer. He saw Molly looking at him, and Arthur, and Hermione. Hermione's brown eyes were vaguely sorrowful, and she shrugged in resignation. Minerva's expression was stony and offered no help at all. /Just try to talk your way out of this one, Potter./  
  
"He has very much to do with Ron, I'm afraid," Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic, said as he strode into the room. His robes billowed out around his plump form, making him look like he was wearing a tent caught in a high wind, but for all the absurdity of his appearance his words were flat and he wore *that* expression on his face, one of absolutely overwhelming arrogance and complacency. Harry desperately wanted to wipe it off. "It is not every day, after all," he said, after a suitably weighty pause, "that a war hero is caught consorting with known criminals."  
  
Molly gasped. "Known criminals... Draco Malfoy? He was - Draco *Malfoy*?" Her voice teetered on the edge of breaking. "Hermione," she asked urgently, "did you know anything about this?" Hermione stared helplessly at her mother-in-law for a moment, her lip trembling. "Did you?" Molly asked again.  
  
"Now is not the time, Molly," Minerva cut in, her tone sharp yet oddly gentle. "We'll talk about this later - for the moment, my business is with him." She stared predatorily at Fudge, who stared back with an infuriatingly bland expression.  
  
Moving with the utmost care, Fudge skirted around the edge of the desk and sat down in the chair behind it, the only chair in the room. He folded his hands together neatly on the desktop and peered up at them through his spectacles. The expression never wavered in the least, giving no clue to what he thought of being confronted by two red-eyed and distraught women, an exhausted man, a steely-eyed tiger of a woman, and the man who he had almost had arrested three days ago, along with an Auror and a former Death Eater.  
  
"Now," Fudge said pleasantly after a suitable pause, "how can I help you, Minerva?"  
  
"You can help me first by releasing Ronald Weasley and Draco Malfoy to my custody."  
  
"I'm afraid I can't do that." Fudge leaned back and now his folded hands rested atop his rounded paunch. "Mr. Weasley is accused of consorting with known Death Eaters - a serious offense under the current statutes." The gasp of horror from Molly did not slow him down. "Mr. Malfoy is to be retried for his crimes in the last war, as well as for charges relating to corruption and espionage, charges to which Mr. Weasley will also have to answer." He paused reflectively. "And as for *you*, Mr. Potter, I very... *very* much look forward to hearing your testimony at the trial next Monday."  
  
"Next Monday!" Surprise cracked Minerva's reserve, and Harry felt his stomach lurch. Hermione started forward, Molly's hand went to her mouth. Arthur merely looked resigned. "Fudge - Minister - I need time to prepare if I am to defend these men. I need to talk with them, with Mr. Potter... formulate a defense! How am I to do this in four days?"  
  
"That's your problem," Fudge said. "As far as this Ministry and I are concerned, Mr. Weasley is clearly in violation of the laws set in place to protect the wizarding community from what happened the last time Death Eaters and their ilk were dismissed so... so casually."  
  
"What!" Harry flung himself forward, pushing past Molly and Arthur. Minerva reached out with a hand to stop him, but Harry brushed it off. Rage, sharp and red-hot, had hold of him, and a very clear memory lying helpless and heartbroken behind a curtain while this man backed away from what even he, a fourteen-year-old boy, knew to be incontrovertibly true. "You were one of them!" he half-shouted, very nearly strangled by his own fury. "I remember how you refused to believe Voldemort was back, when Dumbledore *told* you he was back!"  
  
"Mr. Potter!" Fudge's voice spiked upward, cutting Harry off. "Whatever mistakes were made by the Ministry in the past are mistakes that will never be made again. And to be certain of that, Ronald Weasley is going to trial for engaging the very same acts for which Ludo Bagman and Rookwood and their cohorts did. Fraternizing with the enemy? Calling one of them out of exile for something in which he had no interest, for confidential Ministry business? And need I even mention your role in this, or where I found you?" He rocked forward in his, one broad palm slamming down on the desktop with a sharp crack of flesh on wood. "I will *not* tolerate such accusations from even you, Harry Potter."  
  
"Accusations? What is he talking about, Harry?" Molly asked.  
  
"He is perhaps as deeply involved in this as Malfoy and Mr. Weasley," Fudge said with obvious relish. "The only thing eluding me is the nature of that connection - and I fully expect Mr. Potter to provide this information."  
  
"What on earth would Harry have to do with it?" Arthur asked, speaking for the first time.  
  
"Everything," Fudge answered, shooting a squint-eyed look at Harry. His lips quirked in a bitter smile. "It was on account of Mr. Potter's good testimony that Draco Malfoy was spared the fate of the rest of his conspirators. It was, I understand from my informants among Mr. Weasley's Auror team, on Mr. Potter's suggestion that Draco Malfoy was brought into the investigation of Severus Snape's diaries."  
  
"But *why*?" Arthur demanded, stepping up next to Harry. Harry desperately wanted to shrink back, tried not to choke on the nausea of having the support of his best friend's father, a man who by rights should be cursing him for what he did to his son. "I haven't heard anything from you, *Minister*, except accusations. Why do you think Harry would do these things, if in fact he did?"  
  
"That," Fudge said, "is what I most want to know. Will you enlighten us now, Mr. Potter, or will you wait for the witness stand?"  
  
"I think I'll wait to talk to Minerva, first," Harry said, feigning a calmness he most certainly did not feel. His stomach was knotted inside him; he felt the pressure of the room closing about him as the walls of a tomb, heard all too clearly Molly's frantic, whispered demands for explanation to Hermione. And Fudge, Fudge peering at him with eyes bright as a raven's eyes, expectant yet strangely vacant. "I don't think I'd want to say anything you might decide to use against me later."  
  
"That's almost enough of an admission of guilt right there," Fudge said, a bit of a snicker in his voice.  
  
"The only guilt in this room is imagined by you, *Cornelius*," Minerva said bitterly. She drew herself even more upright, if that were possible, and the plumes on her hat bristled menacingly. "I refuse to waste my time any longer; I *will* see Mr. Weasley and Mr. Malfoy, no matter what I have to do to see them. Every moment I spend here is useless to both of them, as well as to their loved ones and those who, no matter what you would have them believe, would prefer to think them innocent. Will you grant me a pass to Azkaban, or will I have to go around you?"  
  
Fudge stared wordlessly at Minerva, robbed suddenly of the control he had just enjoyed over Harry, Hermione, and the Weasleys.  
  
"Need I remind you," Minerva continued, the faint smile on her lips showing she knew Fudge's abrupt powerlessness, "that under wizarding law any attempt to bar the defense from doing its proper work in aiding the accused is grounds to dismiss the case? Surely you remember your History of Magic?"  
  
"To prevent wizardkind from behaving in the same manner as the Muggles that persecuted them," Fudge said sulkily, like a small child being forced to recite for his teacher. The look he gave her was quite similar, full of outrage.  
  
"A law conveniently passed over in the last Death Eater trials," Minerva said, "and no one dared say anything because to go against you meant being implicated in Death Eater conspiracies, at the very least. But now there may be cooler heads... And I'm sure that enough people remember the lesson of Alastor Moody and young Mr. Crouch to know that sometimes the most... fanatic of us are those who are most dangerous."  
  
The blood rushed from Fudge's face so abruptly, Harry thought the man might faint. He felt like doing so himself; Minerva had come frighteningly close to accusing Fudge of being the one thing he most hated, the one accusation no one ever dared to voice. /He's like another Moody/ -- those whispers were only spoken behind closed doors. Not so much so anymore, but in the early days after the war, when Fudge's fanaticism stunned even the most hardened Aurors and Law Enforcement officials. /But,/ they had reasoned, /what would be the chances of that happening again?/  
  
"You can visit them," Fudge said at length. He reached into a drawer, pulled out pen and parchment, and began to scribble something down. "Tomorrow there will be an escort waiting to take you out to Azkaban."  
  
"Thank you, Minister," Molly breathed, collapsing limply back against Arthur, who had returned to her side. Hermione sagged visibly. Minerva did nothing, merely continued to stare narrowly at Fudge.   
  
Harry himself felt sick, and the ravaged, weakened muscles of his leg were beginning to protest the tension of a day spent walking and standing. He desperately willed himself to relax, but it did not seem to want to happen. /You're going to see Ron and Draco,/ he told himself, not wanting to add on 'in Azkaban' to that thought. /You're out of your room at Hogwarts, things are finally happening. You'll get them out of this... *you'll* get out of this./ He thought back to all his old school adventures, to his experiences in the war, all the times he had stared certain death in the face and danced past him, alive if not exactly unscathed. /This is the same./  
  
Yet Fudge was not death, nor would he ever be, but Harry had the feeling the Minister would be just as implacable.  
  
TBC. 


	8. Chapter Eight

+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+  
(Ovid)  
  
CHAPTER EIGHT  
  
The ship, Naeglfar, was very old, and its timbers creaked with each crash of the waves against them. A sad-faced man, who had not introduced himself to his passengers and had not stirred from the tiller since their undocking, piloted the ship with improbable dexterity, despite the heavy seas and precocious winds. It did not seem that they were actually going anywhere, to Harry, but rather that they simply stayed in one place while the sea buffeted the ship and flung salt spray in his eyes - all around him, he could see only the water, with the forbidding cliffs of northern England left far behind. He thought he could see a shadow on the horizon, but the knowledge of what that shadow was... Did he want to get there, or drift on the North Sea forever?  
  
He shuddered at the thought of sinking out here - Naeglfar did not seem to be very sea-worthy - and tried very hard not to be seasick. He was in the middle of fighting yet another prolonged protest from his stomach when a soft, but firm, voice broke into his thoughts.  
  
"You don't have to do this."  
  
Hermione had told him this at least ten times on the boat ride to Azkaban, and the closer they got to it, the harder it became to disagree with her. As the water turned sullen and gray, the waves churning on either side of the Naeglfar's prow, as the shadow of the prison-island loomed, now in the near distance, swallowing the light, all Harry wanted to do was turn around. Even from so far away, he felt the tugging of joylessness, the cold, furrowing sensation of the Dementors reaching out in search of him. He tried to tell himself that he was imagining it, tried to ignore the persistent, lurid memories of his first encounter with a Dementor, tried to console himself with the knowledge that he still had, as Ron put it, "the fastest Patronus this side of the Channel."  
  
/*"Had you noticed anything peculiar about Ron's behavior during his stay at Hogwarts?" Minerva asked. "Something to account for why he might do this?"*  
  
*"No, nothing unusual at all," he answered, trying to fight back rising nausea. When was she going to ask him about Draco?*/  
  
/No, don't think about that./ His hands clenched into fists, his left hand about the wand tucked in his pocket.  
  
Fudge, at least, had consented to giving back his wand, but only after extracting sworn oaths from Harry and Minerva that he would not use it under any circumstance. Even with that nagging inconvenience, it was soothing to once more feel the smooth, polished wood under his fingertips, to imagine that he could feel the throbbing of the phoenix feather's power underneath it. Small consolation, but consolation it was. True, he *did* have the fastest Patronus this side of the Channel... and the rebellious part of him whispered that, no matter what Fudge said or what promises he forced, the magic was still there for the using.  
  
"Harry? Harry, are you listening to me?" Hermione was pulling at his sleeve, her voice insistent. He wondered how long he had been staring out at the water, watching it heave under the relentless whipping of the wind.  
  
"What?" He turned to look at her.  
  
"I told you..." She blinked and turned away, drawing her thick cloak around herself, swiping at a wind-reddened nose with the back of her hand. "You don't have to do this," she repeated, much more softly this time. "You know how you are around Dementors."  
  
"No, I *need* to do this, Hermione," he told her. Saying the words steadied him somehow. /I need to do this... I *can* do this. For myself, for Ron, and for Draco./ He entertained a brief vision of jumping into Draco's cell, shouting 'Surprise!', stifled the urge to laugh at it. "I really... I *have* to do this."  
  
Surprisingly, Hermione accepted this without further argument. Her gaze tracked out over the prow of the ship, to where the island hunched in the turmoil of the sea, solitary and forbidding. Harry glanced backwards, saw nothing beyond the ship's stern save more waves and a flock of lonely gannets crying as they rode the fierce wind. Desire gripped his heart, seeing them, a longing to transform so acute he almost gave into it, never mind that attempting to master the winds out here would certainly kill him.  
  
/But still,/ a sly, quiet voice said, /wouldn't you like to try?/  
  
He reminded himself forcefully of his promises to Fudge, when the Minister had told him he would have Lavender brought to London to return his wand... on conditions, of course. "You are not to perform any magic whatsoever, whether for your own convenience or for self-defense," Fudge had told him, gesturing to Undine and Fortius as he spoke. "That's what they're for."  
  
And what could he have said but yes? He had nodded, keeping bitter words to himself - he'd vented *that* rage on the wall of his room in the Leaky Cauldron, until he'd collapsed weakly in bed, mind churning with images of throttling Fudge, seeing Draco, escaping with Draco. Being happy with Draco. He'd drifted off on that last, and woken only when Lavender broke into his room to hand his wand to him in person, without a word spoken.  
  
Shrill cries broke him from his reverie. He refocused on the bird, watching as a trio of them plummeted to the water. The rest of the flock circled overhead, bobbing on the air currents, until two of the birds resurfaced, bearing fish in their beaks. The third had not come up, but the flock failed to notice this, being too caught up in fighting over the prey brought up by the remaining two. Naeglfar churned on, the chaos of wings and shrieks vanished as the ship drew away; by the time they disappeared from view, the third gannet had not returned.  
  
Arthur, Hermione and Molly appeared on the deck, having been in the ship's small cabin for most of the voyage. Hermione looked as though she had been crying, but she was carefully composed and silent as she walked over to Harry and stood next to him. Molly's pale face was tight and her eyes, normally flashing with equal parts command and good humor, were dull and introspective. Arthur's expression was much the same, and he stood close behind his wife, as though to support her body with his own. Harry's throat tightened, thinking of that. /You couldn't hold Draco up, you couldn't help Ron,/ he castigated himself, /and now you're going to fall, too./  
  
/*"Did you for one moment consider what the potential consequences were?" Minerva asked. "Did you think that you might have been found out?"*  
  
*"All the time," Harry confessed.*  
  
*"Then," Minerva said slowly, as though speaking to a child, "why did you do it?"*/  
  
/Because I had to,/ Harry thought.  
  
A dense fog suddenly rose around them, flat and dark grey and utterly impenetrable. Harry felt Hermione's slight, yet solid presence at his side and was grateful for it; if he hadn't known she was there before, he'd have thought he stood absolutely alone in this blank and endless world, for the fog seemed to swallow everything - the sound of water against the hull, the feel of the deck beneath his feet, even the sharp tang of cold air... it had all vanished, and he stood wrapped in a void...  
  
Just as suddenly as it had come up, the fog vanished, and Azkaban loomed before them.  
  
It was all Harry could do not to cry out, or faint. Next to him, Hermione made a small noise; Molly stifled a cry of dismay against Arthur's chest. Minerva remained stony and silent. Harry had never seen Azkaban himself - the war at least had spared him that - and seeing it now... Even with the horrors he had seen, and the narrow straits he had endured, Azkaban was still Azkaban. He wondered, not for the first time, what kind of mind could have conceived a place like this.  
  
Black it was, relieved by patches of grey and silvery light where the sullen water lapped at the faces of jagged, nearly perpendicular cliffs. /Sullen water./ And indeed it was as if the turbulent seas, just minutes behind them, had never existed. There was a small slit in the rock face to which Naeglfar's pilot was steering them, and the darkness behind it was terrifying in its completeness. They passed through it, as if through a curtain, and vision returned; they were in a small port, ramshackle and boasting only two docks, and a small collection of black-robed figures waiting just beyond them.  
  
Naeglfar lumbered into the slip, brushing against the pylons as its crew scrambled to secure it to the dock. The occasional wave rebounding from the dock would jolt the ship fiercely, which in its own way was as nauseating as the rhythmic bounce of the high seas, and by the time the passengers were allowed to disembark, Harry felt distinctly ill. Taking in his surroundings did not help, for it seemed to him that he was trapped in some unearthly place, the realm of a dream, or a place where no human, no matter how evil, could dwell. Dark cliffs towered above them, rising to dizzying heights, their sides slick with rain. A few plants clung tenaciously to their sides, and the long, weeping tendrils of a storm-ravaged tree hung over a stagnant lagoon. Between the cliffs, a path wound upwards; Harry found his gaze following it into the heights, until a swirling and impenetrable mist made impossible any further discernment.  
  
The sickness did not pass as they walked slowly down the dock to meet the Warden of Azkaban, and the horseless carriage sent to collect them. It grew, rather, as he exchanged civil words with Malleus Ironhand and the witch with him, a sour-faced woman whom Ironhand introduced as Niobe Western. Her hand was limp and chill, and bled coldness into Harry's flesh that persisted even as he climbed into the coach and slid into his seat. Fortius, huge and silent, sat next to him, pressing him close against the doors. Claustrophobia only made his stomach worse as it added anxiety to the mix, and the tugging, sucking sensation only increased in power.  
  
/*"What were your initial... feelings when you saw Mr. Malfoy after his arrival at Hogwarts"?*  
  
*"I... I was happy, I guess, to see him. And worried, a little.*  
  
*"Why?*  
  
*"Because I didn't know how it was going to turn out..."*/  
  
/Now you know./ Harry did not know whether this was his own thought, or something else's; it seemed to belong to a Dementor, for it was cold and insinuated itself into his very skull, like frozen talons. He tried very hard to remember the joy of seeing Draco, of coming upon him startled and half-dressed his first morning back at Hogwarts, of speaking with him back at the manor house. But that became more difficult, and he found those images being replaced by others: the nights when he lay awake, terrified lest Draco see him and hate him, watching Draco be arrested, the nights *after* that when he lay awake, terrified lest Draco see him and hate him for what he had done...  
  
And after that, it grew much worse. The carriage groaned in protest underneath them, bouncing back and forth on a trail that wound steeply upward. Fortius's closeness was suffocating; the grey, flat eyes of Malleus were inescapable. Even Arthur, Molly, Hermione, and Minerva seemed to condemn him, though they sat sunk in their own silence. Harry tried, once or twice, to look out the window, but the prospect was bleak, and quickly made him look back inside again, to be confronted by Malleus's pale, rock-like face. There was no comfort to be found in conversation, for the air in the carriage seemed to kill it, and both Minerva and Hermione were drawn into their own thoughts. There were cracks in the windows, and one of them was stuck open; it was through this that the cold wind moaned.   
  
Harry briefly imagined voices on that wind, muted cries of suffering and despair. In the back of his mind, a familiar image played, indistinct and blurred, dyed in green light. He heard his father's shouts carried on the wind, his mother's weeping, Voldemort's cold, inhuman voice.  
  
He must have made some movement, for Malleus's eyes were upon him and the Warden said, "I apologize for the window - the Ministry is not very good about sending repair teams out here, and no one has been able to fix it. A... um... a Reparo spell won't work, for some reason."  
  
"Ah." Harry said, and that was the last monosyllable exchanged until they arrived at the prison itself. If it were at all possible, the air darkened and became more oppressive, although the Dementors were nowhere in sight. Instead, a blank-faced young man with grey eyes and dark hair stood there, his dark robe making him nearly invisible against the black rock. He stood before a pair of great carven doors and did not move as the company alighted from the carriage. Malleus hastened up the steps to meet him and they exchanged a brief, inaudible conversation.   
  
"Is everything quite all right?" Minerva asked. Harry glanced at her, and was not surprised to see her face cast in lines of impatience. The plumes on her hat bristled aggressively, defying the overwhelming, quelling depression of the place.  
  
"Yes, of course," Malleus answered. "I was just being reassured that all is indeed ready for your arrival; outside of the occasional tribunal set by the Ministry, we don't receive many visitors, and certainly not in such numbers. There were... precautions to be taken."  
  
Despite the neutrality of Malleus's tone, Harry knew exactly what the precautions were for. He shuddered to think that, if this was what Azkaban felt like with 'precautions' taken, what it would have felt during the war, or during Voldemort's first attacks, when Dementors must have freely prowled the island. He thought of Sirius, huddled in his small, dark cell, clinging to the bitter knowledge of his innocence. He thought of Draco in that cell, and wondered what was left to *his* mind. What was left *of* his mind, if it came to that.  
  
But then... how much could happen after only a few days? /You'll find out./  
  
Malleus, standing atop the stairs, surveyed them with an unreadable expression on his face. Apparently satisfied with whatever he saw, he nodded and turned back to the door, placing a hand upon it. There was a terrific grating of stone on stone as the doors slowly swung open to reveal a yawning, dimly-lit atrium.  
  
Harry mounted the steps slowly, just behind Minerva and Arthur, keeping a tight rein on himself. Hermione was still silent beside him, but he could feel her soft, small hand stealing into his, fingers wrapping around his own and squeezing. Glancing down, he found that he could not see her face, for her hair was loose and fell over it, concealing her expression like a veil. They moved through the atrium, which aside from being dark and dusty, was unthreatening. On opposite sides of the room, open doors led into hallways. There was another door before them, plain wood with an ornate bronze knob, worked like the face of a screaming man. It was the only decorative touch of the room, Harry saw, for the entire thing seemed to have been carved out of the cliff itself - were they inside the mountain, then? - and the young man who stood in a dim recess near the plain door seemed as much a part of the rocky walls and shadows as he seemed human.  
  
"I'm sorry, but policy is for only one set of visitors to be allowed to see a prisoner at one time," Malleus explained, standing before the door and turning to address them all. "Mr. and Mrs. Weasley may go first to see Ronald, if they would like, and Headmistress McGonagall to Mr. Malfoy. I trust this is acceptable?" There was a strong indication in his tone that, whether or not it was acceptable, that was how it was going to be.  
  
Minerva seemed to have heard this and nodded stiff acceptance. A swift, subtle gesture from Malleus brought Niobe Western forward, and she in turn gestured for Minerva to follow her off in one direction. Harry tracked the two women with his gaze, watching until they vanished down the narrow hallway. Malleus's voice, now oddly considerate, drew him back, and he realized with a start that he was directing Hermione and Undine to a small suite of visitors' rooms.  
  
"They are plain, but I think they shall serve you well, if you want to freshen up," Malleus was saying. The civility in such a dank, oppressive place nearly made Harry want to laugh. The man, for all his rock-like face and dour manner, managed to sound almost timid. "There is a... a Cheering Charm, I believe, maintained around them - and the Dementors are not permitted to go there."  
  
"Thank you," Hermione answered with the same odd, forced politeness.  
  
The stony contours of Malleus's face readjusted themselves into a smile. He gestured once more, and the young man who had met them at the doors detached himself from the shadows. Without a word or even so much as a look, he moved down the hallway in the opposite direction from Niobe and Minerva, and Undine and Hermione followed, Hermione with a curious, backward glance.  
  
Malleus turned to him now, the smile still engraved upon his face. "And you, Harry Potter... I have wanted to meet you for some time now, you know, but I think you left the Department before you were ever rotated to Azkaban."  
  
"I did," Harry said, too poleaxed to offer further comment.  
  
"Well, we shall have some time to talk," Malleus said as he produced a key from the folds of his robe and unlocked the door. "My office has my own living quarters attached to it; you are welcome, of course, to make use of them to clean up - the sea spray becomes sticky after the water dries, does it not? I have made the voyage out here too many times to count, and I find that I still can't get used to it." The door creaked open and Malleus swept through it, leaving Harry to trail behind uncertainly.  
  
He watched as Malleus moved about the office, methodically lighting candles with matches and straightening the bits of clutter adorning shelves and his desktop. Malleus seemed to be looking for something as well, pausing in his progress to peer under stacks of parchment, open and close drawers, and muttering to himself all the while. Harry glanced covertly about the room, somewhat relieved at the homey clutter of it, the photographs posted here and there on the wall.  
  
Photographs that did not move. And the matches, the uncertainty with the names of spells...  
  
"You're... you're a Muggle!" Harry gasped.  
  
"Guilty as charged," Malleus said, looking up for his search. He did not seem particularly upset at Harry's revelation; instead, the lines of his face shifted into something very much like amusement.  
  
"But... *why*?" The question jolted out of Harry. "I - I mean, why... Oh, damn." He trailed off, realizing there was no graceful way to ask the question: Why would the Ministry of Magic put a Muggle in charge of Azkaban?  
  
Malleus, though, seemed to know the question behind the stammering; he must have gotten that one a lot. "What right-thinking wizard would live amongst Dementors?" he asked neutrally. He had paused in his search, and now those grey eyes were trained speculatively on Harry. It was not an easy gaze to endure. "They drain a wizard of his powers, if you recall - could you honestly imagine a wizard willingly doing such a thing, putting himself in danger of losing everything that defines him, no matter how strong his sense of justice? No... No, it would be much better to have a normal human running Azkaban, for he wouldn't have much to lose by it, and that is what they decided very long ago when this island was first raised and Dementors tamed to work on it. We Ironhands have been Wardens of Azkaban for six hundred years - there are royal families out there who have had their titles less than half the time we've had ours!" Malleus smiled as he looked about his office. "My son will inherit the job from me, I expect, and keep the tradition going."  
  
The thought of Malleus having a son - or any kind of family - was somewhat incomprehensible, as was the thought that Malleus seemed to have no problem consigning his son to such a life. Harry wondered, unsuccessfully, what it must be like to be brought up to *want* this, to be led into this very office and told that this was what awaited him: years of guarding criminals and managing monsters.  
  
"It is a strange fate, is it not?" Malleus asked. He gestured to a chair and Harry, hating not being able to run away but not knowing what else to do, walked stiffly over to it and sat. Malleus took his own seat, folding his hands atop his desk in a manner that reminded Harry forcibly of Minerva. "We Ironhands were chosen, you see, because unlike most Muggles, we can *see* Dementors, and so can the other families who have helped us here for generations, but they are Squibs, mostly, and it's difficult for them, finding work that pays well. And the Ministry does pay us very well for what we do here."  
  
There was a challenge in Malleus's voice, but Harry was unsure as to what it was and how to address it. What Malleus had just told him was startling enough.  
  
"I realize this is something out of the common way for you," Malleus said now. "After all, it's not common knowledge, is it? They would teach it at Hogwarts, I suppose, if it were... but nobody cares very much to hear about what goes on in a place like this."  
  
Harry thought of what Remus Lupin and Sirius had told him of Azkaban; Sirius, it seemed, had not wanted to remember very much at all. And who could blame him? Most of the people who went there never returned... Or if they did, it was filthy and wrung-out and almost inhuman, like Sirius had been. /Dementors drain away all your joy, every shred of every happy memory you have./ What would Draco have to lose? What would he have left to him, by the time this was over, however it ended?  
  
"The Minister of Magic told me of you when he sent me the notice for your arrival," Malleus said, "and I have to confess, I was rather eager to meet you."  
  
/'Rather eager to meet you'? Have you stepped into a Victorian novel, Potter?/ Aloud, though, he said: "I can't imagine why."  
  
Malleus made a reproving, clucking sound. "You lived your whole life as a wizard raised by Muggles - I spent my whole life as a Muggle who lived with wizards. Strange, is it not? Beyond that, though, Cornelius told me something of why you were coming... and that, I suppose, was what fascinated me the most. Many people are not terribly willing to come out here, you understand, even if their jobs require them to. Aurors stay here on three-month rotations and leave as quickly as they can. The Ministry has offices here, but I think the last time they used them was during the first war and they couldn't prosecute Death Eaters fast enough... And now here you come, to visit a former Death Eater with whom, I am given to understand, you never should have been fraternizing in the first place. I have to admit... it is most fascinating."  
  
The queer, clinical gleam in Malleus's eyes set anxiety churning in the pit of Harry's stomach, and Minerva's questions came back to him in a rush.  
  
/*"You knew Mr. Malfoy was being brought to Hogwarts on official Ministry business, business in which you were only marginally involved... You should not have even been speaking with him, as a professor. What ever possessed you to approach him?*  
  
*Harry's mouth dried, and he felt something hard and tight lock about his throat. Minerva's gaze bored into him, as though the woman could read his soul, and for a moment Harry wished she could - that way, at least, he would not have to answer.  
  
*"You must tell me," Minerva said softly. She reached across the table to pat him consolingly on the hand, just as an adult might do for a child. "I will not... I will not judge you, whatever you say, Harry. I simply need to know, so that I can help."*/  
  
Now, with Malleus staring at him hungrily - that was it, that was hunger in those flat grey eyes - Harry said, "You should talk to Minerva about that... not that she'll tell you anything." The small surge of defiance was meaningless; he hadn't been able to answer Minerva's question.  
  
/*"I hope, sir, that you come up with a better reply before the trial - I doubt you'll get such consideration from Fudge and the rest of the court."*/  
  
Malleus shrugged. "Well, the truth will out eventually, I suppose. How is your godfather?"  
  
++++++++++++++++  
  
Weary and nursing an infant headache, Harry stumbled down the hallway, trailing in Malleus' wake. The dark hallways, each one indistinguishable from the last - Malleus had taken who knew how many turns - had blended together, and the minutes had, too. Harry had lost track of time somewhere back in Malleus' office, had lost track of the endless, unexpected interrogation and the half-answers he had given. It had ended only when Minerva had appeared, pale and stiffly silent, and ordered Malleus to stop.  
  
The Warden had, thankfully, and had given quick orders to Niobe that sent her and Minerva off to the visitors' rooms. Hermione would be visiting Ron now, he had added, and - this next said with a telling look - with visiting hours almost over for the day, it would be best to see Draco before much longer.  
  
And how much longer that was... Time felt out of joint here, as though it too were affected by the hopelessness of this place. The only light in the interminable hallways was faint and flickering, and seemed to come from nowhere, the strange half-light of a dream. And there were no doors, he realized dully, no doors or windows, and there was complete silence, as though he and Malleus were the only beings in this place. Or, at least, the only things alive.  
  
Presently, though, Malleus paused just before the hallway dead-ended into another one running at a slight angle to it. He placed his hand against the wall and murmured something Harry could not make out. A deep, subterranean grating filled the hall, bouncing off the walls in a series of harsh echoes. Harry shivered at the sound and drew in on himself even as he tried to look around Malleus' shoulder to see what lay beyond. There was light, at least, and from a real source. He could see torches in brackets on the wall, blazing with even and steady light. /Thank God./  
  
Malleus stepped to the side and gestured, a movement that reminded Harry dimly (and bizarrely) of a hotel concierge. /Step right this way... into a prison cell, ladies and gentlemen,/ he thought as he squared his shoulders and prepared to step inside.  
  
"I shall be just outside, right here," Malleus whispered, hand on his arm to hold him back a moment. "You will have half an hour - and that is all." There was a brief pause, then: "I am sorry."  
  
/For what?/ The question hovered on Harry's lips, but he kept it back. Instead, he rallied himself and strode by Malleus, ignoring the nervous prickling at the back of his neck and the dim, disconnected roar in his ears.  
  
And stopped, disoriented in the light, blazing and uncomfortable against the blackness of the hallways. Blinking, he looked around, froze as he saw Draco sitting in a chair, staring at him.  
  
The persistent vision of Draco shrouded in darkness and menaced by Dementors swept away with such a rush that Harry nearly reeled with relief. For a moment, he could think of nothing else except that his fears had not come true, that Draco was well, unharmed... and so dreadfully, dreadfully pale. And with shadows under his eyes, and a tense, drawn expression that seemed to see a threat in everything. Even a threat in Harry, for the pale eyes fixed on him warily, and the rush of relief from just moments earlier faded away.  
  
"Draco?" Harry hated the question he could not keep out of his voice. The young man sitting across the table from him *was* Draco... but so far removed from the Draco Malfoy he had known that he knew he might as well be looking at a stranger. He remembered visiting Ron in St. Mungo's once, when he had been hurt in the line of duty, and heard the same tone in Hermione's voice, which had not been not so much asking the washed-out, nearly incoherent stranger who he was so much as it had been a tentative, unspoken, "Are you really here?"  
  
"Harry." Draco's voice was raspy and weak, but he managed a slight smile nonetheless. He surveyed Harry for a silent moment. "You look terrible, Potter."  
  
"You don't look so hot yourself, Malfoy." Harry winced at the automatic retort.  
  
Draco, however, waved it off, and the smile grew a bit before it faded out. "Well, this place has played hell with my tan..." He trailed off, shook his head, and sighed. "I think that was my one smart remark for the day... I'm afraid I just don't have the energy to keep it up. The Warden, you understand, doesn't like prisoners who have things to say. Will you have a seat?"  
  
Feeling somewhat numb, Harry nodded wordlessly and sat down in the chair across from Draco, who looked even worse close up. There were streaks of grime on the black robe, and even some under Draco's fingernails. The pale blond hair, which had shone like finest gold under the morning sun that day in the library, was now dull and covered with a fine layer of the same dust that shrouded Draco's entire body. But worse, far worse, was the defeated, nakedly human cast to Draco's face, all its pride and superiority stripped away.  
  
"I know they haven't treated you well," Harry said, wishing his voice didn't sound so rough, wishing the sight of Draco like this did not hurt the way it did. "But... is there anything I can do?"  
  
Draco was silent for a moment. "I wish there was... very much. But that you're here, that's enough." Again, that soft and almost not-there smile. "I'd hoped, you know, but didn't expect it."  
  
"What? You thought that I wouldn't come?" Harry sat back a bit, surprised. "Why would you think that?"  
  
"It's what I would have done," Draco said simply. He blinked and shook his head. "Not that it makes me happy to admit it, but there you go. It would have been far more intelligent - not that Gryffindors have ever been known for it, I guess - to go along with Fudge and let me hang. He wants me to, you know, but it seems that even I get a trial, seeing as Ron gets one. When he brought me here, that's all he was talking about... How it would be for show, you understand, and how I might as well ask to be thrown to the Dementors, to spare myself." A shuddering breath. "Bloody hell! I won't give him the satisfaction."  
  
"Fudge *wanted* me to let you hang," Harry answered, his voice low and intense. /He wants you to be executed, and he wants to make an example of me... / He told this to Draco, whose mouth thinned into an expression very much like Minerva's, when she had heard something she disliked. "I couldn't do that, Draco. I could *never* do it."  
  
"You'll only bring yourself down with me," Draco said wearily. "Why do that? You have a career, friends, people who actually *respect* you... Why throw all that away for me?"  
  
"I don't think I'm throwing anything away," Harry said. "I've asked Ron the same thing, you know, why he was risking everything... and he told me... he told me..." /Say it, Potter./ "He told me I needed to be happy, and he was right about that, I guess, but there's so much more... I still owe you Draco, I know it - I didn't want to save your life just to get you packed off to exile, or to end up here, I wanted to save it because your life is worth more than that."  
  
Draco laughed at that, but the laughter was bitter, so bitter and harsh against Harry's ears that he winced to hear it. "You say that... God, I love you, Harry. Only you could make it sound like a person like me could have anything worth living for, or be worth the piece of meat that he is. I love that about you."  
  
"You could say it like you mean it," Harry muttered, taken aback.  
  
"No, you don't understand..." Draco's grey eyes met his, but then skittered away, and when he spoke again, his voice shook. "You know how this place is - everything I can remember that was happy is leaving... there are days when I have to tell myself that my parents weren't always... Well, there are days. And now I can't think of what I've done without... God!" The last word was a frantic gasp. Harry leaned forward, struggling to hear, for Draco's words were coming low and fast, wrenched from him, tumbling out desperately. "Do you know how many people I killed? It doesn't matter if I really did or not, or if I really tortured them or had their homes burnt, or gave the order... I still did it... and," he paused, and his tone gained force. "Do you think I want to live, knowing what I've done? And now I remember that I was happy when I did those things, or at least thinking that what I was doing was right and necessary, and I hate myself for it - how I regretted none of it, and how I never would have, if this hadn't happened to me... I *should* die. By all rights, I should!"  
  
Harry sat, trying to think of a reply. /By all rights, I should... Do you think I want to live, knowing what I've done?/ "But," he said at last, surprised at the steadiness of his voice, "what if I didn't want you to die?"  
  
"I would say you're crazy," Draco answered.  
  
"Then I'm crazy," Harry said, "because I don't want you to die - and I can't let you. I *won't*." He saw the question in Draco's face, and rushed to answer it. "I've *seen* things, Draco," he said, "people I thought were evil turned out to be good, and people I thought were there to help me who were trying to have me killed. And I've done things, too... hurt people, put them in here, even, and I know - I know this, Draco - that nothing is as simple as it seems. What Fudge is doing to you is no less evil than some of the things you've done, or some of the things I've done. It doesn't matter who we did them for, I think some things are bad, no matter what."  
  
"That doesn't change anything," Draco whispered. "I still see their faces. I'll see their faces for the rest of my life." Unsteady fingers crept up his arm, working underneath the sleeve of his robe, and Harry felt a chill dart down his spine as he realized Draco was searching for the Dark Mark on his arm. It would be invisible, he knew, but could fingers feel it? Or was it something different that sensed such a thing, as though the mark were an impress on the soul? "However long that is, I'll see them."  
  
"You won't see them," Harry said, surprised at how soothing he managed to sound. "Or if you do... They'll be regrets, I suppose, and everyone has them, and at least you know that you're human enough to regret the awful things you did."  
  
"But I never did *before*," Draco said forcefully, bringing a hand down on the tabletop with a sharp slap. The sound echoed briefly in the room, then vanished. "And that's what sickens me. What if... what if I *had* had regrets? I wouldn't be here! What if I had dared admit to myself that I was as human as that wretched Muggle out there? I would have been a disgrace to the family name, but at least I wouldn't be here, wanting to kill myself for what I've done to people who wouldn't protect themselves."  
  
"When Vince was captured by Aurors, I was at his trial," Harry said slowly. "At the time I was relieved he would finally be sent to prison, even though I knew what the Dementors were like, even though I get sick every time I see them, and remember my parents dying... I *wanted* him to be there. And I felt like that for a long time; whenever I'd hear of someone else getting sent there, I'd think to myself that it was better they were there, in that place, than out here. But then, after it was all over, I hated myself for thinking that, that I had ever wished anyone could be stuck forever in this place.  
  
"And," he continued, riding over the objection he knew was coming, "I know that you think we're balanced, that you saved my life and I saved yours... but I feel here," he touched his heart, "that I still... I can't let you die the way Fudge wants you to, or live here. I *will* get you out of here."  
  
"I didn't realize you hated me that much," Draco sighed.  
  
"I don't hate you, and you know it," Harry snapped back. "If anything, please remember that."  
  
Draco took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and nodded. "It's difficult to remember things here... But I remember that day in the library, and the time before that, in my room. You're... I told you you're always welcome. Wherever I am, you're welcome, even if it is a cell."  
  
"It may have to be," Harry said softly.  
  
"Anywhere..." Draco frowned and shook his head. "I was wondering... do you have your wand with you?" Warily, Harry said that, yes, he did. "Do you mind?" Draco held out his hand. "I swear... I swear I won't do anything. I don't think I could."  
  
Harry nodded and pulled his wand from his pocket. He hesitated, thinking of Malleus, but the expression on Draco's face - strangely beseeching and entirely earnest - was too much for him, and he handed it over. Draco's slender fingers, shaking a little bit, closed around the wand, and a faint light kindled in his grey eyes as he took it and whispered, "Lumos."  
  
The wand sparked for a moment before it began to emit a steady glow, difficult to see in the bright light of the room. It lasted a moment only before it winked out, but it seemed enough for Draco, who sighed and set the wand down on the table. "At least I still have it," he whispered. "I was afraid... Well, you know."  
  
"I do." Harry understood Draco's reluctance to speak his fears. /A wizard loses his powers if he's too long around Dementors. But how long is 'too long'?/ "And believe me... you won't be here long enough for that to happen. I'll get you out of here, I swear it."  
  
There was a grating sound just behind him. Harry whirled around, and saw that the wall had swung out, revealing once more the blackness of the hall and Malleus' pale, faintly apologetic face. A cold, insidious breeze swept in, wrapped its fingers around Harry, and he realized that Malleus was not alone: that Dementors waited somewhere in the hall. He closed his eyes, fighting against the rising nausea and the green nimbus of light that hovered at the corner of his vision.  
  
"It's time to go," Malleus said. "Mr. Malfoy, if I could please have you follow me?"  
  
Draco rose, halfheartedly brushing off his robes. He had gone even whiter, the pallor of his skin chalky grey against his robe. He moved like an old man, stiff and unsteady, and the reflexive grasp for support on the tabletop galvanized Harry to action. Before he knew it, he had slipped his arm under Draco's, firmly supporting him as Draco's body sagged against his.  
  
"I have you, Draco," he whispered against Draco's ear.  
  
"You have me," Draco breathed. They shuffled across the floor in their awkward embrace, the sounds of clumsy footsteps nearly obscuring Draco's words. "You... you'll save me?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"If you can, find Severus's journal," Draco breathed. "I told Blinker to hide it, and only he and I know where. I... I don't know what I'll be able to do - you'll have to find the answer, and the journals, on your own."  
  
"I - I'll do my best," Harry said. Despite the pain in his leg, aggravated by Draco's weight against it, despite the chill of the prison and the looming horror of the Dementors, he felt some contentment sweep through him at having Draco so close. The solid weight of his body was real, tangible - as though, until this moment when they stood together, he had feared the young man sitting across the table from him had been nothing more than a spirit.  
  
"You'll find it, Harry," Draco said quietly. He was so close, smelling unpleasantly of dust and the grave, but still... They broke apart when Malleus took charge of Draco and handed him over into the custody of the Dementors, who stood back a bit.  
  
"You may return to the cell now," Malleus ordered, nodding tersely at the two Dementors, who turned silently and glided away with Draco trailing limply between them. Malleus turned back around and placed a gentle hand on Harry's shoulder to turn him back in the direction from which they'd come, but Harry shook himself free and spun back around just before Draco and the Dementors turned the corner.  
  
"Wait!" Harry shouted past the knot in his throat. "Dammit, wait!"  
  
The Dementors paused, but did not turn around, for which Harry was deeply grateful. Draco shook himself free, one last dying bit of defiance, and turned to face him. And *there* was the vision, so sharp Harry nearly reeled from how close this scene fit to the horror of his nightmares. But at least, though, Draco did not hunch or cower, and if there was not pride, exactly, then there was at least resolution.  
  
"How," he said, licking his lips and forcing himself to speak. /Pain, and a green light. Was that his mother? Why did his head hurt so badly?/ "How do I find it?"  
  
"You need to pull it up," Draco said very softly. A pale hand, little more than a blur in the darkness, described a dipping motion, like a diving bird. "Pull it up... from deep down."  
  
+++++++  
  
tbc.  
  
Notes:  
  
1.) Naeglfar is the ship that will bear the dead to battle at Ragnarok, the end of the world in Norse mythology. According to the Eddas, it is constructed out of the nails of dead men. Gruesome, isn't it?  
  
2.) Malleus means 'hammer' in Latin. The name of our lovely and talented Warden comes from the Malleus Maleficarum, 'The Hammer of Witches,' which was not only wildly popular for centuries, but also the standard work on how to find, capture, and interrogate a suspected witch.  
  
3.) Atmosphere comes courtesy of three of my favorite Old English poems, 'The Wanderer', 'The Seafarer,' and 'Beowulf.'  
  
4.) All info on Azkaban comes from what I've read in the books and in the HP Lexicon. All mistakes and alterations are my own... whether or not they're intentional, though, you may have to ask. 


	9. Chapter Nine

Author's Note: This chapter was revised to include canon established in Order of the Phoenix, so there are SPOILERS for the fifth book within. If you haven't read it, then, consider yourelf duly warned to stay away until you have. Further, a brief reference to the chess scene in the movie version of PS/SS is included, as it is somewhat more specific than JKR's original.  
  
Thank you, drive through.  
  
CHAPTER NINE  
  
+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+  
  
(Ovid)  
  
CHAPTER NINE  
  
Harry ignored Malleus' rusty protests, and his own wrenching fear of the dementors, and stepped closer. Draco met him halfway. A frigid whirlpool sucked at Harry's thoughts, tried to distract him with despair - /hold on to Draco, hold on tight, we'll take him from you soon enough, he'll die, your friend will die, and you will live - but he fought against it, made himself ask, "Where?"  
  
"The lake." Draco's breath was chill against Harry's ear. The translucent skin was so close, shuddering not inches from Harry's face. "There is... a tunnel. Just fall - it's that easy."  
  
He barely had time to nod before Malleus' hand closed around his arm in a formidable grip, pulling him back. The soft, furious remonstrations slipped through one ear and out the other as the dementors surrounded Draco once more and pulled him away with such swiftness that they seemed to vanish into the dark hallway.  
  
Harry stared blindly at the blank place for a moment, not feeling Malleus' touch upon his arm.  
  
"It's time we were off," the man said in his ear. His breath was colder than the dank air of the prison hallway, and Harry shivered. But he did not move.  
  
"I..." He licked his lips and tried to speak. His throat had gone dry, and something lodged, an uncomfortable and heavy weight, inside his chest. "He looks..." /Finish your sentences!/ Harry searched his memory of Draco's face, and realized that he had never once seen it so pale and drawn, or so defeated. Casting back through the years, he found he could not remember one time when that arrogant, infuriating fire hadn't been in Draco's eyes. The absence frightened him more than he could say.  
  
"No one looks at their best here," Malleus said briskly, and with a certain amount of satisfaction that did not escape Harry. The light touch on Harry's arm became a commanding grip, and before Harry quite knew what was happening, Malleus was towing him along.  
  
Irritably, he shook off Malleus' hand and demanded to know what had been done to Draco, to make him look like that.  
  
Malleus stared down the hallway, and the silence between them became so absolute that Harry thought the man was not going to answer him. After a moment, however, the reply came: "He has a Dementor nearby at all times, which is of course standard procedure, but I have not had him questioned, or had anything much to do with him."  
  
"*You* haven't questioned him," Harry muttered blackly.  
  
The warden must have heard it, for the look he gave Harry was at once irritated and faintly self-deprecating. "True, I have not - but then, I am only the warden. There are others who come here for information... How they get it is not my concern, or my business."  
  
"They're your responsibility."  
  
"They're prisoners," Malleus said flatly. His stride became longer and Harry had to double-time it to keep up. "You would do well to remember this in the future - and you would also do well to remember that while you're here, there is very little you can do to help him. Should you even be helping him?" The expression on Malleus' face was unexpectedly shrewd, and the old hunger was back, probing and seeking. "Naturally, I couldn't help but be informed of events during the last bit of trouble and from all I've gathered..."  
  
"You know absolutely nothing about it," Harry said stiffly. He reached past his headache for anger and found it, enough to bolster his pride. /When did you ever like walking small?/ The thought made more fuel for his anger, but he kept it back. Hoarding it, he thought - that sounded appropriate. "Would you take me to Ron, please?"  
  
Malleus must have caught the hint that Harry was not requesting anything. Wordlessly, he quickened his step until Harry had to hustle to keep up, and the effort told very swiftly on his bad leg. Harry gritted his teeth and forced himself to stay in step with Malleus, determined that the man would not wrench any more satisfaction out of him.  
  
/It seems like that's what he's doing./ Harry glanced covertly at Malleus, probing the blank face for any sign of satisfaction. It was perfectly straight, and revealing of absolutely nothing, yet Harry had the distinct sense that the man was gloating just as Fudge had been back in London. He had that aura to him, Harry thought, the air of a person who had everything going the way he wanted it to go - and had his victims there, right where he wanted them. If Fudge had been a fat, self-satisfied cat toying with mice, though, then Malleus seemed much more dangerous, a tiger watching its prey.  
  
The silence between the two of them grew, fed by Malleus' pleasure and the anger and tension that built in Harry with each passing moment. /Something needs to happen, or I'll explode./ The walk stretched on interminably, the walls slid by with infuriating monotony, their anonymous surface unchanging no matter how hard Harry searched for a landmark. And all the while... He bit back a growl as Malleus strode unconcernedly alongside him.  
  
Finally, after one last sharp turn, they reached a set of stairs. Harry gazed despairingly up them, but Malleus did not pause; instead, he grunted something about a shortcut and began to climb up, leaving Harry to toil in his wake. The stairs wound around in a tight, tortuous knot, like the one rapidly building in Harry's leg. Sweat, unpleasant and clammy, broke out and beaded on his flesh where it raised gooseflesh and trickled down his neck.  
  
He became genuinely worried as the climb continued with no signs of ending, and his hand began to shake as he slid it along the railing. Malleus was glancing periodically back at him, which Harry was trying to anticipate and react to, but with his mind wandering feverishly over possibilities, he couldn't react to swiftly enough. The satisfaction wafting back from Malleus became nearly palpable, a thin thread of acridity in the damp despair of the prison.   
  
/Please,/ Harry thought in time with the breaths he could no longer keep normal - he was panting and wheezing like an old man -- /Please let this end soon./ The walls closed in ever more tightly, and he'd lost all sense of direction except for up and down, and both of those stretched interminably. He would never stop climbing, but if he fell, he would fall forever.  
  
It took a moment for the sound of Malleus unlocking a door to penetrate through the fog surrounding his brain. Keys jangled loudly in the silence, covering up the breaths Harry couldn't keep himself from gulping.  
  
"This is the... ah," Malleus paused, glancing down at Harry who waited a few steps below, "the hospital ward."  
  
"The *what*?" Shock drove the breath from Harry again.  
  
"You heard me." Malleus' grip on the door handle tightened. "Mr. Weasley did not make his trip here very willingly, according to what I was told... I've been having him kept up here until the trial." The warden shrugged and fiddled with the keys some more.  
  
There was a disturbing undercurrent to those words, one that caught at Harry's conscience like a hook. /Don't think about it, don't think about it./ He squared his shoulders, fought down the thoughts and the pain and made himself walk evenly past Malleus as the door swung open.  
  
The first thing that hit Harry was the smell. It was thick and sharp, made of centuries of healing herbs and disgusting concoctions that had marinated with blood and pain, and over it lay the general bitterness of hopelessness of Azkaban itself. A few beds were lined up along the wall and separated by curtains, with tables here and there, jars stacked in cabinets, but there was a patchwork quality to it, something that said the healing done here was only temporary - if healing was ever done at all. This was not a place one went to get better... Death was more easily expected, and probably welcomed.  
  
/Ron./ Curtains were drawn around one bed, and Harry could discern some movement behind it. There was a rustling, a thud of glass on wood, and then an unexpected voice tentatively asking Ron to drink up.  
  
"Neville?"  
  
There was a gasp and liquid splutter, the sound of a spoon hitting the floor.  
  
"Harry?" Neville's disheveled, round head poked through the curtains. "Harry!" Neville vanished a moment to the sound of scraping and muttered comments before he reappeared again, straightening his robes. The effort did not help, but it rarely ever did. Neville always looked as though he had stepped out of a hurricane, and acted it too; even after several years of difficult work, he had kept the wide-eyed expression of perpetual bewilderment that Harry remembered from so long ago. It had been one of the few things that had survived from Before; the hand that shook Harry's even now was steady, the same hand that had splinted Harry's ruined leg and helped carry him to safety.  
  
A sudden jolt of memory from his fifth year came to him: Neville *fighting* the Death Eaters, not cowering in fear or impotence, but *fighting.*  
  
"Neville," Harry mumbled, peering around Neville's shoulder to the curtained bed. Fear spiked sharply inside him. "What... what happened?"  
  
"Come on." Neville turned around and ducked behind the curtain, gesturing for Harry to follow. Harry obeyed, looking back briefly at Malleus, who offered him a thin smile. Harry had time to briefly wonder at the expression before he heard Neville's voice, very low but insistent, saying, "Ron... Ron, come on... Harry's here."  
  
The words drew his wavering attention back to the still figure on the bed. For a moment he was pleasantly numb and distant, very far removed from the sight of his best friend, deathly pale and lifeless on the bed.  
  
"Oh, *Ron*..." As Ron's name creaked from his lips, reality hit him, a staggering blow to the heart.  
  
"Do I... look that bad?" First one eyelid and then the other cracked open to peer at Harry with pained and weary humor.  
  
"Worse," Harry said faintly. He fell more than sat into a chair Neville had pushed up behind him. He tried to remember all the times Ron had gotten into some scrape or other. /When he broke his arm back in the Whomping Willow,/ a frantic little voice supplied. He had had the same desperate whiteness then, his freckles standing out in violent relief against his skin. He remembered with awful clarity when he had pulled Ron from the lake and the clutches of the mer-people. The brightness of his red hair was almost an obscenity. /So much like Draco.../ Like Draco, Ron was missing some vital property, pulled from him by this place.  
  
Stiffly, he moved his chair closer to Ron's bedside. The red head flopped listlessly over to track his movements. Ron's eyes slid shut again when Harry settled himself. Neville was hovering directly behind Harry now, making soft and concerned noises.  
  
"What happened, Ron?" Harry whispered, bending close.  
  
For a moment he thought Ron had fallen asleep - /Don't think about him dying/ - and he was about to turn around to ask Neville when Ron's whispered, "Cru-" froze him.  
  
"Don't say anything, Ron," Neville broke in, glancing nervously at the place beyond the curtain where Malleus Ironhand waited. He turned aside, picked up a quill and a piece of paper, scribbled something, and handed it to Harry.  
  
"Oh." Harry's fingers knotted around the parchment. It was an effort to unwind them; as soon as he did, they fell to shredding the parchment, crumbling it so that small pieces of it littered the lap of his robe. He searched through himself, trying to find anger, horror, despair, murderous rage, guilt, righteous conviction... Nothing. Deep inside he found absolutely nothing.  
  
The day had drained everything from him; any normal reactions he could have had lay utterly beyond him. It was like injuring his leg had been, pain piled upon pain until the sensation ceased to have any meaning. Once, halfway along that terrible trek back home, he had fallen and sprained his ankle - and had not realized it until Neville had gotten him into a bed in Hogwarts' sick ward. He simply hadn't felt it.  
  
Dealing with Ron was like this, another part of Harry's life that had been tortured and twisted beyond all endurance. And so when he gazed at his best friend it was through that screen of strange detachment, letting the pain wash over and around him, but never go through him.  
  
"Who was it?" he asked calmly. His fingers worried at the dwindling scrap of parchment.  
  
"He doesn't remember," Neville said before Ron could get his mouth open, but loud enough to cover anything Ron might have said. He turned to Harry and said in a softer voice, "We've been over this with Professor McGonagall already - she's got all his testimony and everything, but I don't want him to say anything that could get him in trouble."  
  
"I'm already in trouble," Ron mumbled half into his pillow. He had opened his eyes again, red-rimmed but curiously intent.  
  
"You shouldn't have done this, Ron," Harry told him. There was something deep in his throat now, a small tickle. His fingers redoubled their efforts on the parchment, peeling away tiny bits of it with his nails.  
  
"I should have done it sooner." The words were little more than a sigh, but were audible enough. "Dragged it out too long."  
  
"You shouldn't have done it at all," Harry replied tightly. "I... you've told me why so many times why, but I can't believe it. This - " his gesture took in the tiny curtained space, the sick ward, the entire prison - "isn't worth what happened to you. Nothing is."  
  
Ron's eyes slid shut. "You're always worth it."  
  
/"Of course you would," Hermione whispered sadly. The smile she turned on him was so deeply grief-ridden it snarled around his heart and made it difficult to think past the ache in it. "To Ron, you're always worth it... And that's why he did it."/  
  
/Oh, no, no.../ Harry thought now, despairingly.  
  
/ "That's why... I don't know why I didn't see it."/  
  
Ron's words, and the memory of Hermione's, stripped the fog away. The length of the day stretched cruelly before him, the weight of revelation oppressed him: Draco had been imprisoned and slowly drained of life by dementors, Ron had been tortured, suffered under Cruciatus... /because of you, Harry Potter. *Because of you*./  
  
/You're always worth it./  
  
"Ron, I'm not." Oh, God, he was going to start crying. /Don't cry, you'll make an ass out of yourself in front of Neville./ Neville, who, was hanging tactfully back - he had probably seen hundreds of people blubbering helplessly over the body of some family member or other, watching Harry have a breakdown would be just another one to add to the list. "Ron, I'm *not*."  
  
Ron wasn't arguing, but through the thin haze of confusion and denial, Harry saw this was because he had dozed off. The slack, exhausted face was an accusation - and, too, it was a denial of the words Ron had just said moments earlier. /Could anything be worth *this*? Not likely... especially not you, Harry Potter./  
  
Wearily, he slumped back in his chair. Had he ever been this tired? He remembered visits to St. Mungo's, to the closed wards that always seemed to have sleeping potions piped through the air. But people got better at St. Mungo's...  
  
Neville sighed loudly. "He's really a mess, Harry, I can't lie to you... I tried to, to Mrs. Weasley, and I think she would have hexed me if Mr. Weasley hadn't stopped her."  
  
Harry had no difficulty accepting this. Mrs. Weasley had a tigerish temper, fierce enough to match any three of her children, and he could easily see her lashing out at Neville in the fear of the moment. Attacking Malleus would have done no good... it would have landed her in a cell right next to Draco. "Will he get better?" he asked softly, wondering if this time his answer would be different.  
  
"I don't know," Neville muttered. He fussed with his wand, then turned to rearrange the vials and bottles arranged on the bedside table. "Maybe."  
  
There had never before been any 'maybe' about Ron. He thought about their school days, their steady divergence from each other, when he'd thought it best to rely on himself instead of on friends loaded down with new, important responsibilities that seemed to have no real importance at all. Friendship had been a kind of tyranny back then; he'd both loved Ron and Hermione, and resented them, because when it was all said and done, and they'd made it through the war alive... they had been there.  
  
"Ron... I can't. I can't do it," Harry whispered fervently, blinking a bit to keep back tears. "Not alone."  
  
Ron stirred at the words, shook his head, and turned to face Harry.  
  
"You're going to have to." The hazel eyes were uncompromising despite the pain. "Harry... you've already faced down You-Know - I mean, Voldemort... alone.. .and you're going to have to do this alone, too. I can't do it, Hermione can't do it, Draco can't - you're going to have to save the day." Ron paused thoughtfully. "Again."  
  
"Not... I can't do it by myself, Ron!" He didn't know how he kept his voice from breaking into a wail.  
  
"You can... you have." Ron's voice was now very low, and Harry had to lean forward to hear him. There were dark marks under his eyes, and as he spoke, his lids slid shut. "Fudge has to be stopped, Harry. It's as bad - as bad as the last time, when he didn't believe Voldemort was coming back."  
  
It had been fifth year... Harry could not think of Umbridge without a wave of loathing. The inquisition had had its own peculiar, evil flavor back then, with the truth squelched underneath Fudge and Umbridge's demands for order. Now, under the guise of Draco's trial, Fudge wanted to once again remind the world who was in charge. He, Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, would make an example to those who thought to start Voldemort's crusade again, and Draco Malfoy was his example. Ron Weasley was his example, as Harry Potter had once been.  
  
/You're only The Boy Who Lived when times are good... Otherwise, you're just an attention-seeking, angsting teenager./ He wondered obliquely what the headlines would be this time around.  
  
BOY WHO LIVED, DEATH EATER, AUROR FOUND IN COMPROMISING POSITION  
  
Ministry suspects subversion of war heroes, unnatural sexual acts  
  
He giggled involuntarily. Ron, who had been dozing off, came to with a start.  
  
"Glad you think it's funny," Ron grunted.  
  
"Sorry."   
  
The parchment was gone now, and its scraps now littered the floor at Harry's feet. He wanted to latch onto something else and expend his frustration on that - it had been so long since he'd found himself trapped and helpless, with nothing to do. Coming at the end of several days of incarceration, the thought was intolerable. A sudden restlessness, despite the difficulty of the day, seized him. There was no room, though, to move in the tiny cubicle, not with the bed taking up most of the space and Neville occupying it.  
  
His fingers switched to kneading the loose drapery of his robe.  
  
"I shouldn't keep him awake much longer," Neville said abruptly, hovering on the side of the bed opposite Harry. "He's had a pretty rough time of it, Harry, and he needs his rest."  
  
Harry could only nod. He tried not to think of the times he had seen people under Cruciatus. There were shadows in Neville's eyes that said he remembered all too well other, less fortunate people - his parents, tortured into mindlessness by the pain - but overlaying the fear and uncertainty was his kind of bravery, and maybe the confidence of a mediwizard. /Some things can't be fixed,/ he told Neville silently.   
  
/So what? It's worth a try, at least. Right, Harry?/ would be Neville's answer.  
  
"Is there anything you need before I go?" he asked Ron.  
  
The red head shook weakly on the pillow. "No... no, not really." Ron coughed, a dry and rasping wheeze. Neville was by his head immediately with a cup of water, but Ron ignored it. "Just... I need to tell you, but I couldn't tell McGonagall. Or, I tried, but she thought I was delirious... Well, maybe I was... but..."  
  
"What is it, Ron?"  
  
Ron's lips curved in a slight smile. There was a long, weary silence; for a moment, Harry thought Ron had dozed off, but then the hazel eyes flickered open and Ron whispered, "Knight to H3."  
  
Later, at dinner, Minerva would ask Harry later what this comment meant, saying that she had always known Ron liked chess, but what did it have to do with the present situation? Ignoring Hermione's gasp of horrified comprehension, he would look steadfastly at his napkin and say that he didn't know. Ron must have been delirious, he would say. Delirious people say all sorts of things.  
  
TBC. 


	10. Chapter Ten

+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+  
  
(Ovid)  
  
CHAPTER TEN  
  
The wind chased Harry high and fast through the sky. The air currents were unusually tricksome - or maybe it was his distraction, and his thoughts, that made the flying so difficult. He drove his wings hard against a rising draft, felt it boost him roughly upwards so that he almost flipped over. Righting himself just in time, feeling the human terror clawing at the strange animal logic - that part of his brain that told him how to fly - he forced himself to calm down.  
  
/Calm down?/ he thought, banking to follow the line of a stream he knew led to Draco's home. /How can I calm down?/ Perversely, after their visit to Azkaban, it had been Hermione who had been the calm one, and Harry who had been in need of that influence. /How could she have been so calm?/ The stream lost itself in a tangle of thick canopy as it wound its way northward; Harry angled downward to catch sight of it through the tree limbs. It flickered and flashed in unexpected places, elusive as thought. He struggled to reconcile himself to both these things - the thought and the river.  
  
When preparing to leave Azkaban, he had spoken briefly with Hermione - Hermione, who seemed to know what he was doing, and to approve of it. Maybe it hadn't been approval, exactly, more like resignation. Or determination. He'd found it hard to tell; her voice had taken on infinite shadings when she had come to him and told him she would help him in any way she could, because Ron could no longer do it.  
  
"I won't let Fudge take you away too," Hermione had said. Had there been a trace of ferocity in the words? Desperation? "I *can't* let him, Harry. He's cost me enough already. Whatever you're looking for in Snape's journal - I know you'll find it."  
  
Her words chased him, too, clung to him although he tried to shake them. /He's cost me enough./ Fudge - Harry remembered his awe of the man, but it had diluted itself over the passage of time to the normal awe of any child for an authority figure. His respect had decreased proportionately, had vanished altogether when he had heard Fudge turning a blind eye to Voldemort's return, and turned to contempt when Fudge had nearly destroyed Hogwarts in his fanaticism. /How many years of war did he cost us? How many friends died because he couldn't - wouldn't - see what needed to be seen?/  
  
Dumbledore would have called that a futile question; there wasn't any magic in the world that could show them what might have been. The Mirror of Erised? It would have shown Harry only what he wanted so desperately to be true: the punishment of a man guilty of not preventing what he could have prevented. Certainly, though, that would be better than the other choice, that maybe Fudge had been trying to avoid a general panic in the wizarding world, that he had done so not out of selfishness, but out of good intentions.  
  
/That's what the road to hell is paved with,/ he reminded himself. The forests were thinning now, vanishing altogether over a small, forsaken bit of open field before returning just as thick as before. He arrowed over both forest and farmland, flying at the same speed he had been all day, impelled by the fierce wind at his back, the thoughts at the back of his mind, the desperation of his last memory of Draco, the quick burning anger rising in him.  
  
/From deep down./ Draco could have hidden it in the ocean, or in a hole in his flower garden. It could be anywhere. The manor was probably being watched by Aurors; there was no way he could sneak in. Fly through an open window? Doubtlessly, the authorities would have secured the place... Fudge would probably have taken along some select treasures.  
  
While Ron was dying.  
  
/Ron is *not* dying,/ he told himself, but the insidious /you need to go back and be with him/ put the lie to his assurance.  
  
/No./ Hermione had told him to go; she, Minerva, the Weasleys, and Neville Longbottom (Neville! Of all people!) had the situation well in hand. And Ron was not wholly without friends elsewhere, she had reminded him. "And Draco," she'd said reluctantly, "has no one except you."  
  
She'd known, of course, that Harry would have stayed if she'd asked him, and he knew it too. He would have hated it, have tried to hate her and Ron for insisting on the friendship that had bound them for so many years... but he would have stayed. That she had released him still made something in his heart, even now, twist and ache with an unexpected sharpness. Yet she had *not* let him go; that obligation to Ron and to her, no matter that she had absolved him of it, would follow him everywhere like a dragging chain.  
  
Such heaviness, when he was light as the wind he rode on; already he could see the outline of the manor, dim even to his sight, in the far distance, embraced by the forest and hills. /You have to save something out of all this. You can't save Ron, you can't save Hermione. You probably can't even save yourself. Just... save Draco./  
  
In turning toward the mansion, Harry ran into a headwind that nearly sent him turning end over end. He managed to correct himself and angle back toward the lake; the winds wanted to push him to the west, but he grimly resisted them. He almost missed the lake, as it swung away from him with terrible swiftness, but with a final effort he climbed above the draft and made his way above the lake. He hovered over it uncertainly a moment, turning Draco's words over in his mind.  
  
/"The lake... There is... a tunnel. Just fall..."  
  
The water of the lake was dark, the occasional glassine ripple making it like obsidian. Above Harry, the sky was clear, the sun warm on his back, but the light and warmth did not seem to penetrate the water at all. He couldn't even see his own reflection - the lake took the sunlight, the clarity of the day, and devoured it, and nothing but a hole of liquid blackness lay stagnant beneath him.  
  
/"It's that easy."/  
  
/"There is a tunnel..."/ By the lake? A secret entrance?  
  
/"Just fall..."/ Despite the weariness in Draco's voice, the words - Harry now remembered this - had had a peculiar intensity. He recalled the shaky, dipping motion of Draco's hand, like a bird diving down into water...  
  
He couldn't let himself think too much about that. /"Just fall..."/  
  
/Just fall, Harry,/ he told himself. He gained a few more feet of altitude, then angled downwards. Folding his wings close to his body, he let himself drop.  
  
Wind howled past him. He shot through it like a black arrow straight into the heart of the lake. The water's face rushed up at him with terrifying speed; everything in him, hawk and human, screamed for him to twist out of the dive - but gravity had him now, and something else that drew him down, down into the waters.  
  
He never saw himself as he hit the surface - he *never* hit the surface, for the water parted around him. He had the impression first of gloomy light that faded out into gray, a distant rushing and a sense of weight pressing in around him. Then the gray became a strange, incandescent blue, and before he knew it the tunnel flashed to an end, spitting him out into a large, vaulted room.  
  
There was no way to make a graceful landing of it; something in the tunnel had shed his speed, but he was so disoriented that braking in flight quite escaped him. And so he found himself toppling end-over-end, barely missing the marching rows of stone columns and finally landing in a painful, skidding lump on the floor.  
  
He lay there a moment, wings sprawled uncomfortably out to either side of him, just breathing.  
  
Slowly, the cold of the stone leeched through his body heat. He struggled briefly before remembering to change back. The metamorphosis was an effort, such a one as it had never been - every tendon resisted it, he could hardly think clearly enough, past shock and exhaustion. For a terrifying moment he almost lost control of the transition, felt himself lurching between forms. Hollow wing bones wavered into fingers before shifting back, his eyesight was clear one moment, blurred the next by human imperfection. The pain in his leg echoed throughout his body.  
  
But it was done, and he lay another moment more, gasping, eyes shut tight.  
  
When he opened them again, it was to a high, vaulted ceiling, and pillars lit by hidden lights that vanished away into shadows. The columns marched away in neat rows to some distant end; the only interruption of their order were long stone shelves and - and, Harry realized with a sudden jolt, sarcophagi.  
  
Carefully, he pulled himself upright. The scrabbling of his feet and short, pained breaths rasped loudly in the empty air. He paused, hand braced against a pillar, and listened to the echoes recede into nothingness. Age lay on the place, age and incredible - malignant - power. He glanced upwards, certain eyes were watching him from the shadows. That he saw nothing gave him no comfort.   
  
Blinking, he dragged his gaze from the invisible heights and looked around. There was light, faint and strange, dreamlike and coming from nowhere that he could discern. No torches hung on the columns, no candleholders lined the crypt. But light there was, enough to make the place a maze of shadows. For all the size of the place, it now seemed incredibly confining, the empty air breathing close upon Harry's neck as he wandered through the crypt.  
  
The air was cold, but not damp; there had to have been spells placed here, Harry thought, to keep out the damp - and that meant there were likely other spells as well. What had he set off just by coming here? He thought unhappily of the dragons guarding the underground vaults in Gringotts, and then of the Malfoy history of attraction to the Dark Arts. It took only a moment to pull his wand from the folds of his robe; the length of holly, the handle worn to fit his palm, calmed him somewhat - but by no means did it make him bold.  
  
He wandered past tombs - Sulpicius Malfoi, dead in 1213. There was a Latin inscription beneath the head of the effigy, as sharp and clear as it had been carved the day before: *facti lumina crimen habet.* Peering closer, Harry saw that the effigy's eyes were blank, staring holes dug into the marble. Near Sulpicius was his wife, Eurodise, with a blunted knife in her hand.  
  
Other tombs lay scattered about, seemingly at random, and Harry moved quickly through them. It seemed that those eyes, riveted as they were to the invisible ceiling, followed him. /Just find the diary,/ he told himself as he stumbled through the labyrinth, fighting against nerves. /Find it so you can get out./ He tried not to think about how he would get out - he could see no walls, only the endless rank and file of the columns.  
  
/Where could this thing be?/ The chamber seemed endless; he could be searching the rest of his life. He had seen that most of the shelves of artifacts were clustered about the sarcophagi themselves; many of the coffins were done about with chains holding huge agrippas down with their links through strong iron locks unrusted by time. Some of the books stirred if Harry got too close. One it seemed was encased in stone, resting on the breast of a slumbering Julia Black-Malfoy, but the stone quivered dangerously when Harry stepped too close.  
  
He moved back quickly, too quickly; all his weight fell on his injured leg. Crying out, he stumbled; there was nothing except to fall, the painful crack of falling on his tailbone. In flailing for balance, his hand struck a smooth marble surface; he had a split second to arch his shoulders against the impact and save his head from striking the coffin behind him.  
  
"Oh, God..."  
  
Panting, he turned his face into the coolness of the stone, which only made his sweat clammy and uncomfortable against his skin. /Draco... don't just sit there, get up!/ He twisted around, hoisted himself up by gripping the edge of the sarcophagus. Stiff muscles rebelled, and he was dimly aware that he had done something to his knee; there would be a bruise on his back in the morning, guaranteed. But he stood finally, hands braced on the elegantly carved drapery on the lid, stared down into the face of the effigy.  
  
"Oh, *God*."  
  
Sightlessly, Draco Malfoy's eyes stared into infinity, wide and blank.  
  
Harry jerked away from the sarcophagus, tangling his fingers in his robe to wipe away the memory of cold marble. His heart did a strange tripe-thud against his ribs, and his breath caught in his lungs. Draco's face, so finely carved, seemed for a terrifying moment to be the real thing - that pale, that perfect, the lips parted slightly, the brow wrinkled in some unspoken thought. The body, cloaked in folds of stone, was still that lithe, swift form Harry remembered from that ages-ago afternoon - so close, hot despite the icy paleness of Draco's skin, against Harry's own body - hovering at the edge of potency, about to be transfigured into life, that it might rise and set aside the book clasped -  
  
/And in the lifeless hands, Harry saw, hands as long-fingered and elegant in marble as in flesh, closed around the leather cover of the diary of Severus Snape./  
  
Steeling himself, Harry drew closer. He half-expected Draco's eyes to move, to turn to meet his, and was chagrined to realize he was waiting for the effigy to do just that. Carefully he reached out, cringing a bit as his fingers brushed those of Draco's fingers.  
  
There was a sudden warmth in the stone beneath his skin. Harry removed his hands warily, wondering if the diary or the image were bespelled in some way. Likely they were - but he could spend the next year curse-breaking both of them and never finding the solution. It took a moment to rally his courage - /don't be such a wimp, Potter!/ - before he placed his hands on the statue's once more.  
  
Heat roared into the marble hands, unexpectedly searing against the cold. The pain was too great - Harry had no choice but to break contact, crying out in pain and frustration. Bewildered and nursing hands that felt as though they had been burned away to nothing, Harry glared at the effigy, bitterly cursing it - and Fudge for his blindness, himself for the same and for his failure, Draco for putting him in this position, Ron for dying, Hermione for not being -  
  
The hands of the effigy moved, the fingers unlacing gracefully. Slowly the arms moved until they lay naturally down the sides, the fingers now draped over the folds of graven cloak. Harry could hear a faint cracking sound, that of molecules of stone grinding against each other, and then the statue was still, the book lying free upon Draco's chest.  
  
/It was bespelled,/ he thought, but not with the grim certainty of before - there was instead a strange elation in the thought, that somehow a spell had been shaped to respond specifically to him. Had Draco done it? Images of the trial, the small explosion of smoke as the dragon-heartstring evaporated when Fudge cut through it, came back to him. Not Draco, then, but another? Blinker the house-elf? He peered into the darkness; no answer came out of it.  
  
But the diary was there, and with inward certainty he knew he was meant to take it. He reached out and removed it from its resting place on Draco's chest, not flinching this time as he laid a hand briefly upon the curve where the chest would slope down into the abdomen. Still the sightless eyes stared into the void, but looking more closely now, Harry saw no true lifelessness - some spirit of Draco, the part sucked out of him by the misery of Azkaban, had been preserved in stone, if not in flesh. He gathered the diary to him, felt the fugitive warmth of it seep into his body - so blessedly easy, all of a sudden, to imagine it as warm from Draco's touch; that Draco had freely handed it to him, asked him (asked him) to read it.  
  
He had, of course, been the one to find them - a chance discovery, really, when a wall had accidentally given way during the expansion of Honeyduke's - he had been there to help block the secret passageway into the store's basement. And there they had been: filthy, their pages coming loose, not the slightest spell woven about them to protect them from time or the elements. Others had been found in later days, by accident, and in the same condition. But blank pages had been their protection - either that or Snape thought it not likely that they would survive the impending attack on Hogsmede. Ministry curses had been added later, "to protect classified material"; after Ron had taken it, Harry hadn't seen it again until it was put in Draco's hands... and by then the diary had belonged more to Draco than it ever had to him, if the diary could ever have belonged to him in the first place.  
  
Not for the first time he thought of a Pensieve, a teenaged boy's most painful memory - one of glossy black hair, sarcastic eyes framed by glasses, a darting golden Snitch almost as radiant and as elusive as a red-headed girl who offered scorn and salvation at the same time. Intruding on Snape's memories now... the man was gone, true; he had died years ago, lost several years into a war that would give many people more honorable deaths, but opening this book now still had the flavor of intrusion.  
  
He could still see the face of Severus Snape, fury and hatred blazing in those fathomless eyes, fury and hatred directed mostly at him, but some reserved for his father, and behind it something else - an old bitterness, scars never fully healed, the despair of knowing that one's most closely-guarded secret has been exposed, pulled from its hiding place.  
  
But Draco had read to him, just sections, but enough... And, with the war now gone (or as gone as the war could ever be), Harry thought Snape wouldn't mind, if it was for a good cause.  
  
And Draco, surely, was good enough a cause to justify his prying.  
  
And so he sat down again, stiffly and not without a little pain, his back propped against the side of the sarcophagus, the book set up against his bent knees, as if on a lectern.  
  
He opened the book. The first two pages had stuck together. Carefully, he slipped a finger between the pages and parted them; the parchment was reluctant, but under his gentle pressure separated. He smoothed the page back and studied thoughtfully the words written in minute, careful script in the center of the page:  
  
/"Now, my brother Mambres, take care that you do well in this life to your children and to your friends, because in hell there is no good thing, only torment and blackness. And after you are dead, then you shall come to hell and amongst the dead you will have your dwelling, underneath the earth, and your grave shall be two cubits wide and four cubits long."/  
  
On the facing page, again written in Snape's precise script, was his opening address. Draco had not read him this.  
  
'Hello, Draco.  
  
'I have buried these several books at various places in Hogsmeade, places that have, for various reasons, been important to my life at Hogwarts, and I am sure you know why. This page you are reading now is, in effect, my last will and testament, if you will, and it is the final thing I have left on record concerning my role in the cause of Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter.  
  
'By now, I expect that one side will have won - there was, I believe, very little time left before the end of things. At any rate, there are no great strategic secrets contained herein, for those I have decided to take to my grave, whenever I may go to it. Therefore, the value of these books is questionable at best, and rests solely with my reader to determine. As it is you, Draco, and you have decided for whatever reason to decode my books, I cherish the hope - and let it not be ill-founded, as hope usually is - that you will learn from what is written here.  
  
'I expect that I am dead at this point; these words were written the night before I was to leave for Cornwall on a mission for Dumbledore, and they were committed to the earth that very morning, as I for a long time had expected to be. Do not, Draco, wonder after my soul or worry that my fate was unjust: whatever end I have come to, I assure you that I have earned it.  
  
'I had begun to keep these journals toward the end of the first year of the war, at the insistence of Albus Dumbledore. At the time, I felt them a useless gesture, the fulfillment of the romantic, senile request of an old man - and yet Dumbledore has proven right about many things, in my school days as now, and I cannot help but feel that there is something here that I have written (although I cannot identify it) that may be of use to you. The use, as I said, will not be strategic - and much, I believe, is not even about the war, but rather to other, older struggles.  
  
'You doubtless remember me without fondness, Draco, and perhaps for no better reason than youthful pride - I daresay that many times I must have rubbed your aristocratic fur the wrong way, and not apologized suitably for it. I do not apologize now. You see, I have found that war does not spare the prideful or the meek. Magic is much the same, for I have seen the most arrogant break under Cruciatus, as well as the spineless and the power-seeking. There is hardness and cruelty in these things that I finally realized I could not match... in seeking to make myself as dark as the magic I practiced, or as bitter as the war between my old master and my old teacher, I saw perhaps more clearly *through* that darkness than I had before....'  
  
Harry swallowed past a tight throat, ignored the persistent tickle of conscience, and kept reading.  
  
'.... If I were a Seer, I would predict the exact day on which you would look at your arm where they branded the Dark Mark, and hate yourself for receiving it. I remember the day I got it as clearly as though it were yesterday, and I cannot think on it now without disgust, for it was the day I did what I vowed I would never do, and became the slave of another man. And even that brand did not release me from slavery of another sort, and it was one that was equally distasteful to me.'  
  
/He owed a life to your father./ Dumbledore's words, or nearly so. /A life-debt can never be easily discharged./  
  
'But I am not a Seer; all I have is the certainty of experience. You will survive this war - you are too much a Slytherin to die in something so meaningless - and, I hope, will find these. No potion I know of allows the maker to see the future; there is only intuition and my own sense, which I trust above all other things, although they have at times led me horribly astray. You will look at your Mark and hate it for what it has done, and what it continues to do; Voldemort holds us even beyond his death, but there are ways in which we can defy him.  
  
'I believe, then, this journal may be one of them.  
  
'Severus Snape, June 2004.'  
  
Harry stared at the signature at the bottom of the page, unwilling to reread the rest of the words. There was something in this as revealing as dipping into Pensieve thoughts. He had never been able to like Snape; for a very long time he had hated the man, and for a short time in the war had fostered a sort of grudging respect, but nothing more... And yet the words were as much contradiction as explanation, if they indeed *were* explanation. They had much of Snape's insufferable lecturing tone in places, yet... /I cannot think on it now without disgust, for it was the day I did what I vowed what I would never do.../  
  
The man had been a hero. Not that it had mattered much to Snape, who never cared, and not that it would have made a difference to the body that had been found in Cornwall by a team of Aurors.  
  
For a time, he thought of deeds done, willingly and unwillingly. He turned the page and read a bit more.  
  
'August 13, 1998  
  
'I have found that the hell of school is the never-ending cycle of new annoyances; once one has got rid of the last batch of overgrown ignoramuses, a troop of smaller ones comes marching in to take their places. I must guide them through their next seven years, with only the useless knowledge that three or four of them will turn out to be any good. Yet on the bright side I only have the one Weasley to deal with this year - the last brother mercifully having graduated from these halls - and the insufferable Granger jade has been given her duly-accorded honors and sent packing. I do not believe I will go into raptures about Potter's departure... there has been celebration enough already.  
  
'McGonagall, true to form, has insisted upon regaling me with the success stories of her pet students. It seems Weasley has darkened the door of the Auror training facilities, and Granger along with him for some top-secret assignment. No one knows what Potter is doing; whatever it is, it is destructive, I am certain of it.  
  
'There is some concern over the whereabouts of Seamus Finnegan; he has not been seen for some weeks, I am given to understand. Well, the boy will turn up eventually. They always do. McGonagall has been most... importune in demanding the use of my former associates to see if anyone has done something untoward with Finnegan; it has been difficult explaining to her that one does not simply use the fireplace to contact the Lestranges, or drop in unexpectedly at the Malfoy estates. She is threatening to go to Dumbledore with her complaints; there is some veiled reference to suspicions that I may be relapsing, and some hints dropped of blackmail. Let her go to Dumbledore and to hell with all of them, I say.  
  
'I have not heard from Draco since our last conversation at the end of the year. Well, that is to be expected, I suppose; he and I did not part on the best of terms, and I have no doubt Malfoy is silently cursing my name. There may be hope, however; I am not dead (yet), so Draco could not have betrayed my secret to Lucius. Either that, or Voldemort is waiting for a more opportune time to exact his vengeance. It is probably the latter of the two.'  
  
Harry paused in his reading, suddenly aware of the fact that he had stopped breathing. He quickly flipped back to the letter on the previous page, then returned to the beginning of the diary. /Something happened between the two,/ he decided after a moment. /What was it, though?/  
  
He had not spent much time with Snape; mostly he'd been with Ron, or off on his own - or closeted with Dumbledore on something, and so he had missed much of what had gone on within the Order of the Phoenix. The fragmentation of responsibilities had been deliberate, of course; few people knew what most others were doing, or knew anything even beyond what their own small circles did. He had gone off on something for Dumbledore, who had been the only person who could have ordered Snape to do anything. Anything could have happened between August 18, 1998 and Severus burying those journals.  
  
/Only one way to find out what it is./  
  
But his back was sore and stiff from sitting and the cold, and he was uncomfortably aware of the rapid failing of his body. He couldn't possibly spend the night here - but it looked like he would have to, as he didn't know if he was up to another transformation, or to carrying the heavy book in his present state. And, too, there was the uncomfortable problem of how to get *out*; the place had the look of permanence, that the only trip a person ever made down to the crypt was one-way.  
  
Unhappily, he set the book down, for his eyes were blurred with exhaustion behind his glasses. The crypt hadn't been designed for the comfort of the living, but he thought at least he could make his own. A wave of the wand - and a moment's fond remembrance - produced a squashy purple sleeping bag and pillow. Exhaustion hovered close upon him, oppressive despite the forbidding silence of the crypt and the mysteries of the diary.  
  
Thinking on it, Harry stood awkwardly and replaced the diary on Draco's chest. A strange knot twisted in his heart as he watched the marble arms bend once more, the fingers reaching upward to lace together over the book, restoring it to the effigy's protective embrace. Harry stood there a moment, gazing at the unexpectedly serene countenance on Draco's sculpted face, realized distantly that there were no dates carved into the side of the coffin as there had been for others. A symbolic thing, then, but done when Draco had grown; the likeness between the living Draco and the marble one was too astonishing, too perfect.  
  
He wanted to bend down - to kiss, touch the statue in some way. But that was silly, and romantic, and Harry Potter was neither of those things.  
  
/How did you know it was me?/ he asked instead, silently.  
  
The effigy gave back no answer, and Harry had not expected one. He stood in silence a few seconds more before sinking back down and crawling inside the sleeping bag. Sleep claimed him in the space of heartbeats, and save for quiet breathing, the crypt was silent as the grave.  
  
TBC.  
  
1.) The Latin inscription on Sulpicius Malfoi's tomb reads (roughly): "It is the eyes that are guilty."  
  
2.) Agrippas are magic books, usually with pages or the binding made of human skin. They were supposed to be highly attuned to their owners, and untouchable by no one else except them. Some stories say that agrippas could sense their owners' death and would react violently by flying through the air and screaming. They take their name from the Renaissance scholar/alchemist Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, who was alleged to have dabbled in the magic arts himself, and wrote vast treatises on the subject.  
  
3.) The quotation at the beginning of Snape's diary is an excerpt from the end of the Old English "Wonders of the East," a catalogue of rare and fantastic beings found in Africa and India. The story of Iamnes and Mambres is Biblical apocrypha. They were said to be the magicians who constested against Moses and Aaron and were killed for their presumption against the God of Israel; the extract is Iamnes' admonition to Mambres, who had according to the Old English text, opened up Iamnes' magic books to reveal "the deep secrets of his brother's idolatry." 


	11. Chapter Eleven

A/N: I hadn't thought to update this pretty much ever again, but in lieu of NaNoWriMo this year, I've decided that November will be a month for taking care of unfinished business. In the spirit of my new resolution, I'm going to see Meta through until the bitter end.  
  
Many thanks to Shezan, Aja, and everyone who's kindly prodded me (while not prodding me g) and gotten me to realize that some things need to be done, if not for the sake of one's sanity, then at least for the sake of others'.  
  
+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+  
  
(Ovid)  
  
CHAPTER ELEVEN  
  
When Harry awoke the next morning, it was to coldness and a deep ache in his body. The stones, even through the thick padding of the sleeping bag, had proven too much for him, and rising was almost too difficult to be done. Still the crypt was, and cold as it had been the day before; the restive shifting of the grimoires increased as Harry rose and stretched, but other than that the place was quiet.  
  
Harry shivered convulsively, peering about himself. Endlessly the columns marched in every direction; endlessly they rose up to the ceiling hidden in the blackness. Pulling his gaze away from the heights did not lessen his unease, for then he was looking down upon the still visage of Draco's effigy, the journal clutched in its carven hands.  
  
Remembering the searing pain from last night - a pain that had left no scarring, no mark that it had ever been - he paused before setting his hands upon the effigy's. Resolutely, though, he slid his fingers over the finely-wrought wrists, lacing them through marble ones - thinking, for a moment, that perhaps they was not stone at all but real flesh, and responding to his touch, growing warmer with the flush of life beneath the skin.  
  
He nearly did not pull away in time, so caught up in finding life in a place of death he was; heat flooded into the effigy, pouring through him like lava. At the last moment he jerked back; the effigy's hands again loosed their grip around the journal, elbows unbending, arms settling along the sides. Cautiously, wincing a bit at the phantom pain, Harry gathered the journal to him, searching for any fugitive warmth in the cracked leather, but it had faded. For a moment he stared at the book in his arms, trying to think clearly. Still tired as he was, it was difficult.  
  
"Step one," he said, his voice very loud and echoing, "is to find a way out of here." In his wandering through the crypt the previous day, he had noticed that the light moved with him, as though it were a nimbus following his every step. Beyond the circumference of light, though, the darkness was absolute - the kind of darkness that is a wall, or an abyss. Glancing up once again, he realized the same was true; the pillars simply stopped where the light ended, no fading into grey and then blackness, but their lengths cut off as if by a knife.  
  
And he thought of the surface of the lake, solid and yet endless, taking light and giving nothing back. /So I shall go back the same way I came in,/ he decided, trying not to think of the possibility of flying forever up and up through such a darkness. The decision galvanized him, despite the flash of hesitation; a charm helped him tear the hem of his robe loose, and he knotted the fabric about the journal as best he could. With a last look at Draco's effigy, still as death in its marble robes, he transformed into his hawk-self, took the ends of the fabric-straps in his claws, and launched into flight.  
  
Determinedly, he banished the clinging tendrils of pain and exhaustion to the edges of his awareness. All his focus was now on the endless ascent into the darkness, for the light followed him no longer as he flew upward. The blackness was so absolute even his hawk eyesight could not penetrate it, and he fought against the instinctive urge to stop. The weight of the journal dragged at him, a formidable weight along with the fear that he would at any moment collide with an unseen barrier.  
  
/Don't give up!/ he commanded himself harshly. /What would you do - stay here forever while Draco and Ron die? Is that what you want, Potter? *Keep going*!/ He would have screamed it if he had a voice; dimly he heard the angry, defiant shriek of a bird, but the darkness swallowed all sound. /*KEEP GOING*!/  
  
And then he was free, breaking out into the light and open air. It was blinding, and he shut his eyes reflexively. The winds were up, blowing cold across the northern forests, and they buffeted him a moment until he could find his bearings. He saw the manor, grey and lonely, off to the east, and so he turned around, instinctively heading for Hogwarts. Victory slid sweetly through him and lent him strength - and, he thought as he caught the wind and let it carry him, it was cleansing, somehow. The first thing that had gone truly right since things had gone so wrong.  
  
He coasted on the breeze and triumph as long as he could; the wind carried him effortlessly to almost to Hogsmeade, and it was no effort after that to coast on a downdraft to the castle, and into an open window low to the ground - his own, he knew, was closed and locked. It was one of the spare classrooms, and mercifully deserted. He changed swiftly back to human form and concealed the journal in his robes.  
  
/I feel like it should be midnight, and Ron and Hermione and I should be trying to sneak back into our rooms after doing something that would have gotten us expelled,/ he thought, grinning a bit. He wondered what the general reaction would be to his return, and half-feared an inquisition by the other teachers and his students - but this fear was nothing like what he expected to find in London, when he returned for Draco's trial.  
  
The halls were likewise empty, and silent except for the chattering of the paintings.  
  
"I say, Professor Potter!" It was Hildegarde von Heft, a cheerful Rubenesque lady who had graced this particular hall since its restoration. "I must say, sir," Hildegarde said, fluttering as much as woman her size could flutter (and in a painting, no less), "none of us expected to see you here for quite some time! Sir Cadogan has been quite desolate."  
  
"I didn't think I'd be here either," Harry answered.  
  
"Oh, wait until - " Hildegarde's plump face had been underpainted with a vivid red blush, and for a moment the blush seemed to intensify.  
  
"Hildegarde!" Harry managed to muffle his shout at the last moment. Hildegarde and her fluttering subsided. "Hildegarde," Harry repeated somewhat more calmly, "I would very much appreciate it if you could not spread the word of my getting back... I'd rather not have anyone know."  
  
"Well, I don't see how that's possible to keep people from knowing," Hildegarde said grumpily, "but *I* won't tell anyone. Still, Professor Potter, if you don't mind my saying so, it would do the students a world of good to know you've gotten back safe and sound: some of them are quite worried."  
  
For a second Harry couldn't speak. /My students, and they're worried about me,/ he thought, trying to envision his contrary, reluctant, and at times bumbling charges actually worrying about him.  
  
"It has something to do with a rather... ribald poem, Professor Potter," Hildegarde explained. "One of the fourth years was reciting it nonstop, and another student turned him into - well, I'm not sure what it was..."  
  
"Just don't tell anyone," Harry said.  
  
"Of course," Hildegarde said airily. She reclined on an improbably lavish bed, all draped brocade and watered silk and waved a jeweled hand at him in dismissal.  
  
Harry went on his way, not entirely convinced of Hildegarde's promise of secrecy. He took the back ways up to the professors' quarters, purposely avoiding the portraits wherever he could, or swearing them to silence where he couldn't. He made it to his rooms without molestation, however, and it was with a sigh of relief that he slipped through the door and shut it behind him.  
  
He'd thought he was going to be exhausted, from two days of nearly nonstop flight and desperation, and then days before that of worry, but now in the privacy of his room and the knowledge of having escaped detection, he felt curiously excited. The weight of the journal against his body was solid and real and distantly exciting; he pulled it out and weighed it in his hands, running his fingers over the binding and the thick sheets of parchment. Such a plain and unpromising thing... but it held answers. It held *salvation*. He was sure of it.  
  
Without a second thought, he double-checked the lock on his door and charmed it against unwanted intruders. He limped over to his bed and sat heavily upon it - after an uncomfortable night on the floor of the crypt, and an all-day flight, his body cramped unwillingly at the thought of his desk. Already the sun was westering, and the desultory light of late afternoon filtered through his windows. He could *feel* the hours running away. In two days he would be in London. In two days Draco would go before the judges, and Ron, and in two days he would know the fashion of the rest of his life.  
  
/Don't give up./  
  
Fleetingly he thought of an old man and a boy, both angry, and the boy spying on the memories of the man. There had been humiliation in that worst memory of Snape's, and humiliation and utter fury in Snape's face when he had found Harry in that memory, that day in the Penseive... He had not thought about it much, beyond a fierce satisfaction that his sadistic professor had suffered so, but now, many years removed from his resentment he could not help but think if this prying was as disregarding of Snape's privacy as that older one.  
  
But this was Draco, he told himself, and Snape had been Draco's mentor. Do it. Don't give up.  
  
He opened the book and began to read.  
  
'Hello, Draco.  
  
'I have buried these several books at various places in Hogsmeade, places that have, for various reasons, been important to my life at Hogwarts, and I am sure you know why. This page you are reading now is, in effect, my last will and testament, if you will, and it is the final thing I have left on record concerning my role in the cause of Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter....  
  
'... It goes ill for both sides this year so far, and we are only a week into the new year. January is greyer and colder than I can remember it being in my entire life. The entire school is very quiet; students are supposed to be returning, but none of my fellow instructors believe parents will be letting their children walk down the street, much less get on the train to Hogsmeade. A Gryffindor sixth-year was found, cursed, in Salisbury just last week. Aurors apprehended MacNair three days ago. I do not think MacNair is alive anymore.  
  
'"All Giant-land groans." There are dozens of half-giants in Diagon Alley, they say, part of the general amnesty the Ministry has organized. What good they'll be for work other than smashing things, I have no idea. I have heard talk of frost-giants waiting in Scandinavia, but whether for Voldemort or Dumbledore no one knows. They are simply there, waiting. I have been waiting, too.  
  
'Everything is set in order for a semester I am now fairly sure will never happen. The only sounds in the hallways are Peeves and Filch. For the first time in my teaching career, I actually wish there were students here; at least, I would have something to distract me from the fear that has grown with each passing day. If there were students here, at least that would be a sign that there is something normal, and that things have not gotten as bad as I know them to be. But that is denial, and useless. The students aren't coming this semester. They may not come in the fall. They may not ever come again.  
  
'There is nothing to do, then, but to wait uselessly. The Order still does its work, and I do mine. My work right now is to sit in my office and stew and wait for the Veritaserum to reach maturity. There will be a time for action, and doubtless I will wish very much that I could be back in my office, when the time for action comes...'  
  
Blinking, he realized it was dark. Someone had been knocking, but they had gone away. There'd been a voice, he thought, a woman's and anxious. But she had gone too, and it didn't matter. He picked up his wand and muttered a quick charm for the candles in his room to light, but his eyes never left the book.  
  
'After the first uprising, after Voldemort was dispelled, I had found myself wondering many things. Really, it is rather marvelous how one can go so long seeing in black and white before coming around to the realization that grey is there as well. Oh, there are definitely things I still am not inclined to look upon with any degree of ambiguity, but more and more there were questions rising around me, and now in this war (so many years later) it seems I am surrounded by them.  
  
'What brings a person to this realization? I am at a loss to explain it, but one day where I had thought to find a simple answer, there were instead shades of possibility. I remember it quite clearly: I was speaking with Sprout, of all people - more precisely, she was ranting about Death Eaters, and their uniform, hideous evil, and how a Dementor's Kiss would be too good for the whole lot of them.  
  
'Now, I bear no loyalty toward my old comrades; I am just as certain that they feel the same way about me, but that is the way of things. We can't all get along. But I know what it is to be deceived, and I also know what drove many to Voldemort: fear of Muggles, disdain of them, promises of a better life for many, power for some, glory for others. Many of them died, or were imprisoned; some died who probably should not have, and many lived who would be better off not being alive.  
  
'And there *were* many evil people in the Death Eaters. There still are. Maybe realizing what evil truly is is what complicates things. It isn't merely doing something against the values of those in power, it is placing the goal - money, power, fame, control - before all else, so that even the innocent are plowed down. I do not know when I realized that, or even if it's explainable, but one only needs to look at Fudge to see that evil need not wear a dark cloak to walk the earth.  
  
'But at any rate, I attempted to explain all of this to Sprout, who refused to hear any of it. I'm sure she will report her suspicions to Dumbledore sometime soon, if she hasn't already; in this world, to explain is to commiserate, and to understand is to be complicit...  
  
'... Dumbledore asked me today if I would be willing to undertake a mission south to Cornwall. I will not leave for some time - indeed, Dumbledore himself does not know when I must leave, or anything more specific than the place. However, I'm sure he *does* know, but is choosing not to tell. Fine. I asked the nature of the mission, and it is (of course) 'Top Secret,' and that I shall be made aware of it at the proper time. Did I ever trust people, when I was younger? Strange, I have no memory of it; Dumbledore, the great grey warrior of our time, is no more trustworthy than Voldemort. But nonetheless I *shall* go....  
  
'... I saw Draco briefly today in my office. We had words together, and they were not pleasant, but I expect that may be the least of what passes between us, should we ever see each other again. I could not go back to the Death Eaters - I *cannot*; that is plain fact, and no amount of Malfoy blustering will ever change that. I told him as much, and told him finally - I cannot put into words how wonderful this felt - what it is that Voldemort holds out to him, and what it will bring in the end.  
  
'"'Do you think that the kind of power skulkers like Peter Pettigrew have is the kind of power you would want?" I asked, and he said Pettigrew will get what he deserves coming to him, and that Voldemort will "reward the cunning", and presumably he - Draco, I mean - will be among them.  
  
'"Illusions," I said to him. "There's nothing behind them except broken promises."  
  
'He did not believe me, of course; young people never believe their elders when they're told a truth they don't wish to hear. But that is the nature of young people, to be stupid and conveniently deaf. Draco, under his Malfoy arrogance, is not precisely stupid; I have hope for him. But I am not Trelawney (thanks be to the powers!), and hope is sometimes a cruel and horribly wrong thing.  
  
'Still... these are uncertain days. I cannot even be uncertain of my old prejudices anymore. There are potions I know how to make, that can clear the mind and give it a glimpse of how things truly are - and how things may yet be, if the man has the strength of mind to look into such a terrifying place as the future. I do not, however, need a potion for this; hope comes very rarely to me now, so now when I *do* hope it is usually with some expectation that things may turn out as I anticipate...'  
  
Blink,ing, he realized it was early morning. Someone had been knocking, but they had gone away. There'd been many voices, all clamoring for his attention. But they had gone too, and it didn't matter. He picked up his wand; the dawnlight was clear enough that he didn't need the candles anymore, and he muttered a quick charm to snuff them, and his eyes never left the book as they slid shut and Harry fell asleep.  
  
'There is a line, a place one stands at which there is a choice to stay as one is and refuse all change, or to cross over and become something so wholly unfamiliar that the thought of doing so is incomprehensible. To stay on one side is like death, or a slow, rotting misery, but to cross and become the unknown is its own death. What am I, if I am not myself?  
  
'I have come to that line now, I think. I stand at the very edge of it. The final step will take me over.  
  
'These six years have worn hard - I hate admitting it, but there it is. Many of my former students have been killed, on both sides... I regret all of them equally. What is it that ever made me want what I did - the power Voldemort offered, the glory, a place at the side of the most powerful wizards of our time? I remember wanting these things so badly I ached for them. I would have killed - I *did* kill - for them. At least there is no blood on my hands so far, at least, not blood I have put there myself. For that, at least, I am grateful, even though that shall not be the case very soon.  
  
'It has been a long journey to this point, and at times I am surprised it has lasted as long as it did - or, to be more honest, that *I* have lasted as long as I have. I've lost track of the times I should have woken up with destruction all around me, or in a cell at Azkaban, or not woken up at all. But this is the last step, over the line before me, and this is the hardest of all the many steps that have brought me to this point.  
  
'These are very nearly the last words I shall ever write, I think. Dumbledore has told me all I must know about what I need to do. "I won't force you to go, Severus," he told me earlier, when he told me that it was time for me to go to Cornwall. After six years, I had begun to think he'd forgotten about it. Unfortunately, Dumbledore has a mind like a steel trap, and I am caught in it... But it may be that I will escape very soon.  
  
'To what end these journals may be put - indeed, if they are ever found - I cannot say. I am not Trelawney. But it is my hope, strangely, that they *will* be found; they will decay over time, for the only things added to them are my little trade secrets to preserve my privacy and ensure only the one who needs to read them will be able to do so, if they can ever be found.... Of this I am most certain, and to express certainty in these days is either the sign of arrogance or great faith; many (myself included) would prefer it to be the former, for I am not given to faith as a general rule, but this belief came upon me without my knowledge - it came as I wrote these pages - and so I am left to subscribe it only to the latter.'  
  
Blinking, he realized it was late in the morning; the light was strong, pouring through the window and making him squint. His glasses were pressed uncomfortably against his nose, and he was stiff from sitting upright for so long. The book was spread open, the last written page facing him. There were several more following, all blank.  
  
The woman's voice was back, and there was a distinctly impatient fist banging on the door.  
  
"Harry! *Harry Potter*!" It was Lavender.  
  
Moving as quickly and silently as he could, Harry slipped the journal under his bed and straightened his robes as best he could. He smelled terrible, he realized; he hadn't showered since leaving the Leaky Cauldron yesterday morning. Yesterday? No... his mind worked furiously. Two days ago it had been, one day and night in the crypt and then last night. Two days.  
  
"Harry!" Lavender shouted again.  
  
He could not move quickly at all, that was apparent. His hip objected strenuously to any sort of movement, and it was actually painful to limp the short distance to the door, undo the charm holding it shut, and open it.  
  
Lavender stood before him, looking as badly as Harry himself felt. Her hair, usually pulled back in its severe bun, wisped untidily and her robe was skewed. But her face... the only time Harry could recall seeing her in such a state when she had learned of Parvati's death: her skin, porcelain and pale, was almost deathly white. Two feverish-red spots stood out on her cheeks, and her eyes... Harry shuddered at what he saw in them. It was desperation, and confusion.  
  
That desperation and confusion both stilled the cutting reply he had been entertaining. Left suddenly without an opening shot, he found himself standing there in silence with her. She stared at him a moment, lost as well.  
  
"Harry," she said, not shouting this time. Instead, her voice sounded inestimably weary, so far from the bitter threats of their last conversation. /This is only going to make things worse for you; I can promise you that, at least - and I don't think it'll go much easier with Ron, or Draco either./ No, not that at all. She slumped in the doorway; looking up, Harry could see the huge, frightening shadow of Fortius looming in the background.  
  
His own voice sounded oddly tentative. "Lavender?"  
  
"Fudge is..." Lavender's voice trailed off. She blinked - were those tears? - and swallowed. "Fudge," she repeated, "is starting Ron's trial today."  
  
For a moment the floor dissolved beneath him in a rush of horror. "Today?" he whispered. "It wasn't... I was leaving today! They were to start two days from now." Four days Fudge had given Minerva, not the three he had originally intended. A scanty concession, but every day Minerva wrung from him would count. He had thought to use today to travel, and to think up some kind of character testimony for Ron and Draco, or to think up ways to break into the courtroom and save them.  
  
"No, no... he called the council late last night. They're meeting in just a few hours. I was knocking... I tried to get in to tell you, but you had the door charmed and I couldn't break it..." Lavender shook her head; her gaze skittered left and right, not wanting to meet Harry's. But at length she fixed on him and when she spoke again, it was with desperate force: "I can't let Fudge do this... I thought I could, Harry, but I can't! When I heard what was happening, that Fudge had broken his word to Professor McGonagall - I don't think what Ron did was right, Harry, but I *am* trying to understand. I don't think I ever will, but..."  
  
"Ron was... *is* our leader," said Fortius from the shadows. Harry jumped; even considering the size of him, Fortius' voice was deep, but surprisingly soft. "Undine doesn't agree with us, but she's agreed not to stand in our way. He's our leader, and we won't have him be brought up on charges like a common criminal."  
  
It was very difficult to think. Lavender was now staring at him, as though Fortius' words had given her new confidence. Perhaps they had. Fortius had moved closer, and was now at Lavender's back; it would be difficult to fear much, Harry decided, with Fortius standing behind you. He had heard the specific omission of Draco - they would never make him any promises on that score, neither of them, but to save Ron... Hope touched him. He recalled Snape's words, very nearly the last he remembered reading: /hope comes very rarely to me now, so now when I *do* hope it is usually with some expectation that things may turn out as I anticipate.../ But then hope, Snape had also said, was cruel.  
  
"Harry, we need to leave as soon as we can. We have transportation arranged from Hogsmeade - a Portkey, straight to Ministry headquarters," Lavender was saying. Her voice was still wavery, but authority had begun to reassert itself. She had, Harry thought unexpectedly, turned out much like Hermione - she might be shaken badly, but she would recover, and now with her leader's life at stake she was putting aside fear and concentrating on what needed to be done. He wished he could do the same.  
  
Lavender's newly-regained command saw Harry showered, changed, and packed in a matter of minutes, and saw that Fortius guarded the hallway against intrusive students. Hildegarde or one of the other portraits had finally cracked under the pressure of their knowledge, and it had become general information that Harry Potter had returned, and those who refused to believe the rumor were clustered (a safe distance from Fortius) waiting to receive some confirmation that it was indeed true.  
  
When Harry stepped out, there was a collective indrawn breath that immediately preceded a deafening cheer that rolled down the halls like a tidal wave. Mostly it was incoherent shouting, but a clear "Professor Potter!" broke out every now and then. He saw that Holly Ferrars and Elizabeth Sloane, mortal enemies, were standing next to each other, jumping up and down and shouting.  
  
Somewhat overwhelmed, Harry walked slowly down the hall. Fortius heeled him, ominously black and silent, and Lavender fell in at his right side. The students stepped back to allow them to pass, but otherwise did not stop cheering.  
  
/Hope,/ a voice said, from a quiet place in Harry's mind, /can be a good thing, too./  
  
He held to that thought as he walked through the corridors of Hogwarts and into the bright sun of the morning. 


	12. Chapter Twelve

Yay! Another update in a reasonable amount of time.  
  
Although I have resolved to get this fic finished ASAP, per my resolution to have November be Finish the Fics Month, my updating schedule is still up in the air. (Thank you Thanksgiving, thank you finals, thank you term papers, thank you Two Towers EDVD...) If you want to actually know when I'm updating without having to guess -- although guessing's always fun -- check out my LJ at http://aesc.livejournal.com for updates, links, and progress reports.  
  
------  
  
+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+  
  
(Ovid )  
  
CHAPTER TWELVE  
  
It was largely due to the intervention of Professors Sinistra and Sprout that the students stayed inside, but as it was the cheers followed them out the main door. Lavender, still striding along next to Harry, had a look on her face that suspiciously resembled a smile, and she reached up to tuck a stray wisp of hair behind her ear, an old gesture Harry remembered from their school days as being an incredibly annoying habit. Fortius, whom Harry could see in the corner of his vision, showed absolutely no reaction. He didn't even look at Sinistra as the witch ran up alongside them.  
  
"Harry!" Celeste gasped as she finally caught up, straightening her hat with one hand and her robes with another. She glared over her shoulder at Fortius, and hiked up her skirts, which were tangled awkwardly about her legs. "Harry," she repeated, somewhat more calmly, "what is going on? Minerva said... Minerva said something about Ron, and Draco, but not what had happened to them. Can't you tell us anything? Is it true that..." She stopped speaking, and instead gazed at him beseechingly.  
  
"Gag order," Lavender said.  
  
"Lavender!" Harry stopped. The momentum of the other three carried them past him, and they stopped. Lavender was looking at him. "You can't do this," Harry continued. "If there's any way we can help... shouldn't we help?"  
  
Lavender was silent for a moment. She glanced at Fortius, who peered down at her inscrutably. At length, she nodded.  
  
As quickly as he could, Harry told Sinistra everything that had happened since she had received news of Ron and Draco's arrest from McGonagall. There had been nothing, apparently, after that day; with each word, Sinistra's face, which had been flushed with exertion, grew paler. The arrest, Azkaban, Ron's condition, the Dementors, Draco, the trial - everything poured out of him, a flood beyond the point of recalling, and though Sinistra's shock was painful, Harry could not stop the words from coming.  
  
But at length there was no more to be said, save, "And we're going to the Ministry now, to see if there's anything we can do - at least for Ron."  
  
"I see." Sinistra drew a ragged breath and straightened up. Her hat was askew, and her dark hair disordered about her face. "Well," she said, "there's no point in holding you up any longer. Professor Potter - Harry - good luck."  
  
"Thank you, Prof - Celeste."  
  
She nodded to him, once again the self-possessed Astronomy professor he remembered so well, and stepped aside so they could continue on. Lavender took the lead, walking swiftly, and it was effort for Harry to catch up. By the time he made it alongside her, her face was a mask once more. He wondered if there would be any figuring her out, ever, or if he could ever understand her, the way she was determined to free Ron at one moment and then the next backing away from any help she could get. He wanted very badly to ask her, and the urge gnawed at him for the rest of their walk, another nagging annoyance next to the ache in his leg. He wished he had thought to fly.  
  
But they did make it to Hogsmeade, and to an alley a few blocks down from Honeydukes. Lavender found their Portkey immediately, a filthy Muggle tennis shoe covered with a dozen varieties of mold. Harry touched it carefully and waited with the same sick anticipation he had whenever he waited for a Portkey to activate.  
  
"Lavender," he said, surprising himself and her. She turned toward him.   
  
"You can't back down after this," he said, just as he felt the familiar, wrenching tug behind his navel and the world vanished in a vortex of color.  
  
They materialized, to Harry's astonishment, in Diagon Alley - and just outside of Liber's. They were standing right in front of the cloudy, grimy windows and Harry, who was facing them, could barely discern blurry figures moving behind them. The sign hanging lopsidedly overhead creaked in the breeze.  
  
"What happened to the Ministry?" he asked impatiently. He could *feel* time slipping through his fingers.  
  
Lavender slipped the shoe into a pocket, making a face as she did so. After wiping her fingers fastidiously on her robes, she turned to Harry. "There were two Portkeys in that alley; I had one arranged as a back-up, just in case - and I'm glad we did. We need to stop here first," she said, gesturing at the sign. Her voice lowered, and she bent close to him, and her next words were of iron resolve.  
  
"I wasn't backing down, Harry - and I have no intention of backing down. I meant what I said back at Hogwarts. Sinistra *needs* to know that Fudge has been keeping this covered up. *I* need Sinistra to know that. She doesn't like him, and I know most of the other professors don't either - and I know that they won't have heard anything. Minerva will have had to abide by Fudge's orders to keep quiet about the trial, or else he could accuse her of trying to subvert justice. But now that all the other professors know, I'll bet that it's only a matter of time until the owls start going out; in fact, I'm sure they've gone out already."  
  
And with that she spun on her heel and marched into Liber's right behind Fortius.  
  
Stunned, Harry followed her inside. He thought, somewhat guiltily, that he would never have thought Lavender could get one over on him. /What do you expect? She's an Auror... she's used to all of that intrigue stuff. She's not just... Lavender. And she can probably do more good for Ron now than you can./ That was somewhat lowering.  
  
Thoughts, guilty, lowering, and otherwise, were dispelled by the peculiar stench of the pub. Harry coughed once and wiped at the tears that had come to his eyes. A wave of what smelled like fermented liver and onions rolled over him, overpowering in the pervasiveness of its presence. Harry gasped, coughed again, and forcibly reminded himself to breathe through his mouth. Lavender favored him with an irritable look, as did the other figures populating the shadows of the room.  
  
Fortius was looking around from his great height, and Harry realized that the denizens of the pub were now not looking at him at all, but instead their eyes were fixed on the Auror. He had only a moment to wonder what this meant before a bellow made the walls tremble.  
  
"FORTIUS!"  
  
It was Aurel Jotunwulf, huge and wild-haired, pushing through a back-room door, boots thundering on the floor. Harry tensed, ready to go for his wand and wondered wildly why Lavender and Fortius weren't doing the same.  
  
For such a huge being, Aurel covered the distance between himself and Fortius with astonishing speed. Before Harry's hand was halfway to his wand, Aurel had reached the Auror and swept him up into an embrace that would have crushed any other person. And Fortius, far from appearing distressed, returned the embrace, and for the first time Harry could recall in their short acquaintance, there was genuine emotion on Fortius' face.  
  
"Fortius my lad!" boomed Aurel joyously. "It's been ages! Where've ye been, boy?"  
  
"Here and there," Fortius mumbled, now seeming somewhat abashed. Aurel released him and stepped back, an expectant look on his craggy face. "Uncle... ah, you know Lavender, of course. And Harry Potter?"  
  
"Lavender, darlin'!" Aurel's voice made the crockery rattle. "'Course I know her. And Harry Potter, o'course - pleasure to see you again, Mr. Potter, sir." He leered happily at them. "And where's Ron Weasley now?"  
  
"Ron's who I need to talk to you about, Uncle," Fortius said, his voice dropping. Aurel's brows drew down in concern, and his expression darkened at the change in Fortius' tone. But as Fortius began to speak, detailing the arrest (glossing, Harry noted, over his role in it), Azkaban, the trial, and his fears that Fudge would find a way to make Ron pay for his suspicions, Aurel's face became as dangerous thunderclouds, dark and dangerous.  
  
"No one knows," Fortius went on. "The Ministry's under strict orders not to say a word to the press - and there hasn't been anything in *The Daily Prophet* about it. This is supposed to be Fudge's way of sweeping everything under the carpet - and we can't let him do that."  
  
"Damned right we can't!" Aurel said forcefully.  
  
"I need your help, Uncle," Fortius said.  
  
"I'll help," Aurel said. "I'll tear down their damned Ministry building myself, is what I'll do!" He turned to the rest of the room, which was watching in tense and dangerous silence. "You hear that, boys? Ron's in trouble! Who's with me?"  
  
The answering chorus of voices sent chills up Harry's back, and he glanced reflexively at the door. There were few words he could make out; many of the shadowy, half-seen figures seemed to speak a different language, or only to howl, snarl, or growl, although they plainly understood Fortius' words. And even as he watched, they drew into the light - huge, misshapen figures, some gruesome parodies of men. There were half-giants among them, some the fair-skinned relatives of the northern frost-giants, and some dark fire-giants from the south; there were vampires, slender and deathly pale and wincing in the sunlight; a Cyclopes and a Cynocephalus who growled and snarled with his dog's mouth; there was even a Veela, but her hair was cut short and a great scar ran down her face.  
  
Harry could remember when Ron had started helping the first giants and the giant-kin who had come over under the Ministry asylum, and though that had been years ago it struck him for the first time what his friend had created. When he had met Aurel just those few days ago (was it really only a few days back?) he had thought the half-giant simply grateful, and not... not ready to endanger himself to save Ron's life.  
  
/Doesn't Ron deserve it, though?/ Harry asked himself. He thought uncomfortably of Ron's own confession - /You're always worth it./ - but there was little time for reflection. The mass of half-giants and other beings gathered speed and howled past him in a great rush of robes, fur, and howls, with Aurel at the front. His wife Yasmina, brandishing a rolling pin the length of Harry's arm, was close behind. All the building resounded with the thunder of massive feet, and above it all the Veela's silvery voice rose in something like a war cry.   
  
When the stampede passed, leaving Liber's empty save for the three wizards, Harry turned to Fortius.  
  
"That's your *uncle*?"  
  
"Great-uncle, on my father's side." Fortius did not seem inclined to pursue the issue. Instead, he straightened his robes and glanced almost uncertainly at Lavender and asked, "Do you think we did the right thing?"  
  
Lavender shrugged. "We'll have to see... and count on the Ministry remembering that they owe the giants and all the other races a debt for not helping Voldemort. As for us, we'll need to spread the word ourselves."  
  
"Hold it!" Harry shouted. The two Aurors, who had begun to move in the direction of the door, paused and looked back at him expectantly. He drew a breath and tried to moderate his tone. It wasn't easy. "Shouldn't we get over to the Ministry?"  
  
"We have some time," Lavender said. If it hadn't been for the slight quaver in her voice, and the anxiety in her eyes, her words would almost have been reassuring. "Because Fortius, Undine, and I were... involved in Ron's arrest" - she had the grace to look ashamed of this, Harry thought spitefully - "we probably shouldn't be too involved, directly anyway, in his trial. But we can stir things up; the Weasleys are pretty popular, and people won't take kindly to the Ministry trying to pull stuff behind their backs."  
  
"But what... what if Fudge finds out that you've been going behind *his* back?"  
  
"I never said it was going to be a fool-proof thing." Lavender scowled at him. "It's too late to worry about it; Fudge will probably have the judge's bench rigged in his favor. The only way we'll be able to get at him is by changing his belief that getting rid of Ron would be a good thing for his image."  
  
"The only thing Fudge fears more than Death Eaters coming back is not being Minister of Magic anymore," Fortius said bitterly. "He's pretty good at forcing people to go along with him by ones and twos, but there's no reasoning with a group of giants who have their minds set on pulling someone limb from limb - and if we can get other witches and wizards on our side, Fudge *can't* bully them."  
  
"He can accuse two or three people of having Death Eater sympathies," Lavender said. "That's what he did with you, you know... and - " She broke off, her lips thinning dangerously. "Maybe he did that with Draco, too. But at any rate, he kept you quiet and Ron in prison because of it. But he won't be able to accuse everyone in Diagon Alley of being Death Eaters, because they don't want Ron put on trial."  
  
Harry nodded bleakly. It was a horrific chance, and he found himself caught between taking it and backing away. In years past, he would have seized on it, no matter how slender it was - even if it seemed a chance with no hope, he would have taken it because it *was* a chance, and a chance was better than nothing. But now, beaten by years and taught the lessons pain had to teach, he could not summon up the courage to admit that Lavender was... He took a deep breath and steadied himself.  
  
/You told Lavender not to back down... don't back down yourself. You're going to have to do this; there's no other way./ Finality swept over him; standing there, with Lavender and Fortius waiting, he grasped at the old truths he had held as a child - that this was a desperate case, fallen to him and now these unlikely companions to make right, simply because there were no others who might do so, and without them there was no other hope.  
  
"Right then," he said. "Let's go."  
  
Cynewulf Ansericarnosus' print shop, attached to *The Daily Prophet* offices, was a cramped and bustling space in all places save one: Cynewulf's office on the second floor. Like the chaos of the shop itself and the minor disaster of his offices, Cynewulf was himself somewhat disordered; his robe was an unfortunate shade of grey dappled with black spatters and a streak of dry ink adorned his nose where he had apparently tried to push his spectacles back up.  
  
The editor-in-chief, head sports writer, and printer of *The Daily Prophet* received them with a somewhat amazed expression on his face and apologies for the mess. Frowning distractedly, he cast several shrinking spells to reduce the piles of papers to manageable sizes and deposited them on an already overflowing side table. "You'll forgive me if I don't shake hands," he said, pausing in his work to display fingers covered with ink and smudges from the printing press. "Now, Mr. Potter, Ms. Brown, Mr. ah - "  
  
"Fortius."  
  
"Right, Mr. Fortius." Cynewulf gazed skeptically up at Fortius' massive figure, which blocked the doorway and part of the window overlooking the printing presses. "Now, what can I do for you all?"  
  
Lavender began to talk, and as she did Cynewulf lost his distraction. His eyes gleamed behind smudged lenses, and he snapped his fingers for a QuickQuotes quill, which obediently began to dance over the parchment on his desk.  
  
"You don't say!" he said in a tone so marveling that Harry wondered if he wasn't being sarcastic. "So Fudge is actually going to put Weasley on trial?"  
  
"Today," Lavender said.  
  
"You realize that by coming to me you're placing yourselves in danger. This is, I'm guessing, confidential information?"  
  
"It is," Fortius rumbled, "and it shouldn't be. It shouldn't even be happening."  
  
"I see," Cynewulf said thoughtfully. "And how did it come to be happening?"  
  
Lavender and Fortius exchanged uncomfortable looks. At last, Lavender sighed and shook her head. "We made a mistake," she said simply. A faint, bitter smile creased her lips. "We got the wrong man."  
  
"The wrong men," Harry broke in. Cynewulf, who appeared to have forgotten about him, glanced at him in surprise. Even the Quill halted briefly in shock, but at a word from Cynewulf continued to write.  
  
"Men?"  
  
"Draco Malfoy is involved as well," Harry said. He gazed defiantly at Cynewulf. "I was too, for a time; Fudge had me incarcerated, because he believed I was willingly consorting with known Death Eaters."  
  
"Were you?"  
  
"Do you think I would be here, with two Aurors, having them tell you these things if I had been?" Harry demanded. "Seriously, do you honestly think that?"  
  
"I have to say I've never met Draco Malfoy - I had enough experience with the father to want as little as possible experience with the son," Cynewulf said, "and I can't say as I've ever met you, Mr. Potter, although Merlin knows I've run enough stories about you that I feel like I should." He paused, picking up a spare quill and turning it over meditatively. "But considering that you're here... I would say that no, you weren't. That kind of suspicion is only for... well, it's not for me."  
  
"You were going to say for Fudge," Harry replied. "Why not admit it?"  
  
"It's bad for people in my position to admit things like that - leads to all sorts of problems getting stuff past the Ministry. You saw what happened to us during the first Voldemort scare." Cynewulf snorted and rubbed the bridge of his nose, which left another trail of black smudges. "But this... well, the last time it happened was with Death Eaters, and we have laws against this sort of thing now.  
  
"What I need now from any of you, though, is proof." Cynewulf sat forward in his chair. His eyes, black as ink, fixed on each of them is turn. "I'd like to help get the word out - "  
  
"There are a dozen half-giants and assorted beings rampaging down Diagon Alley as we speak, and I think they're doing a fairly good job of 'getting the word out,'" Fortius said dryly. "And isn't that enough proof?"  
  
"For a giant, I guess it is," Cynewulf answered, "and I have to confess that I was wondering what that terrible loud racket it was that just went by - like a damned steam engine, it was. But as for myself, I won't be out rampaging any time soon, and if you want me to write anything, I'll need something to go on."  
  
Lavender sat back, frowning fiercely. Even Fortius, whom Harry could see in the corner of his eye, looked discouraged. They had talked for nearly thirty minutes, thirty minutes during which anything might have happened, and to have it wasted...  
  
"I have Severus Snape's journals."  
  
The words exploded from Harry before he knew he said them. In the sudden, atrocious silence that followed he became painfully aware that he *had* said them. He felt the weight of the journals against his body, where he had stowed them in his robes as he had before when he had taken them from Draco's tomb. /Severus... I'm sorry./ The thought flitted through his brain, another apology in the endless litany he owed to Snape.  
  
After the first shock, Lavender picked it up. "The diaries were part of a top-secret project," she explained as Harry pulled the journals from their place in his robes. "When they were found, originally Fudge wanted them burnt, but then it occurred to him that there might be some way to decode them and find out if Snape implicated anyone in the Ministry of being Death Eaters... so Fudge could prosecute them, if they were still alive."  
  
/Oh, God./ Harry's hand shook as he handed the journals over to Cynewulf. His stomach clenched violently and for a moment he feared he would be physically ill. /...Originally Fudge wanted them burnt, but then it occurred to him that there might be some way to decode them and find out if Snape implicated anyone in the Ministry of being Death Eaters.../ Lavender's words echoed cruelly. He hadn't known the real reason why Fudge had wanted the journals decoded, and Draco had almost walked into even more damning evidence than had been presented against him already. It was, he thought dully, like giving a person medicine, only to find that it could kill them.  
  
Cynewulf was leafing through the journals, an intent frown on his face.  
  
"I know it doesn't connect directly," Lavender said. She was leaning forward now, her dark eyes intent on the editor's face, "but it proves that Fudge isn't interested in the rights of the wizarding world when it comes to finding and imprisoning people he suspects of being Death Eaters. You were right: there *are* laws against wizards getting sent to Azkaban without trial... but Fudge is ignoring them. At first I thought he was justified for doing it - that his personal suspicions were more reliable than my own experience. But Ron's been our leader for years... and more, he's been my friend. I can't ignore that."  
  
Cynewulf set the journals down and placed a hand atop them. His face, adorned with its deep wrinkles, was creased in unreadable thought.  
  
"You have our word on it as Aurors," Fortius said. His voice seemed to come from some place either far away or very deep. "Whatever it takes, we'll do it."  
  
"Hm." Cynewulf's ink-dark eyes swiveled in Harry's direction. "And what of you, Mr. Potter?"  
  
"Ron's my friend," Harry said. "And whatever Fudge may try to shove down your throat, Ron would never be a Death Eater. He's had ifamily/i die because of them." Dimly, Harry heard his voice rising, but was powerless to stop it. "Do you honestly think someone who had helped destroy Voldemort's supporters would be friendly with them now?"  
  
"Ah, well, as to that..." Cynewulf shrugged and stood up. Harry leapt to his feet, Lavender and Fortius right behind him. "We haven't had a good scandal here in some time," he continued placidly. "I'll run it."  
  
Harry's heart surged in relief; for a moment, he felt decidedly lightheaded. Behind him he could hear Lavender's barely muffled squeal of triumph - the high-pitched, girlish noise was not something he had been able to associate with her anymore. There was nothing from Fortius, but when Harry managed to turn around, the huge man was fairly radiating satisfaction.  
  
"It'll take just a bit to write something down," Cynewulf was saying as he ushered them out of the office. He had gathered the journals up and placed them into Harry's hand, and Harry felt a rush of relief at having it back in his possession. Cynewulf leered knowingly at him and said, "Of course I'll have to set the print, and get the elves ready for an unscheduled delivery, but I'll see what I can do to get the word out myself. Where are you off to now?"  
  
"The trial," Lavender said calmly, her self-possession having been regained. "We'll storm the thing if we have to."  
  
"Hm! Well, I would be careful about that - Fudge will be looking for anything to hold against Ron, you know." Cynewulf paused. "Did you ever think that turning those giants loose would make things worse? The Minister doesn't exactly like them still, you know."  
  
"We considered that," Fortius said calmly, "and decided it was worth the risk - and they deserved to be told."  
  
The shop all around them was silent, and Harry become aware that the workers were paused in their duties, some by the presses and some hovering at the bags half-full of *Daily Prophet*s. Scents of ink and old, heavy paper filled the air, along with a strange sense of anticipation. A few dozen elves clustered about the main press, staring at the small group with huge eyes, and in the strangely quiet setting Harry looked at Cynewulf and saw something very like to a king surveying his domain.  
  
"Boys!" Cynewulf shouted, "Special edition!"  
  
All at once the press exploded into action, and it was in this flurry of activity that Cynewulf saw them out of his shop. Hearing the whirr and grind of the machinery and the shrill cries of the elves, suddenly, seemed to be the best sound Harry had heard in a long time. Glancing to the side, he saw Lavender's Auror-mask slip to reveal the beginnings of a wide, victorious grin, and he knew that much the same expression had to be on his own face.  
  
"We'll just slip into this next alley down," Fortius was saying as he prowled ahead. "We've a Portkey we can take directly to the Ministry."  
  
"We're going to do it!" Lavender whispered to Harry. It looked very much as though she wanted to clutch at his sleeve or bounce in excitement much as she used to do. "We're going to do it, Harry!"  
  
They were almost to the alley when a voice, breathless with exertion, called out to them.  
  
"Mr. Potter, one thing if you will!"  
  
Harry whipped around, half on the defensive already, only to see Cynewulf jogging toward him. The wizard's face was already very red, despite the short distance, and he wheezed uncomfortably as he skidded to a stop "Yes?"  
  
Cynewulf straightened his robes around him and took a deep breath. "What about Draco Malfoy?"  
  
Harry tensed. "What about him?"  
  
"I heard an awful lot of talk about freeing Ron Weasley," Cynewulf said and the light in his black eyes was suddenly very shrewd and knowing. "However, I did not hear so much about Draco Malfoy. Is he included in this... operation of yours?"  
  
"Why wouldn't he be?" Harry asked. Then, realizing how that must sound - and not knowing how discreet about this Cynewulf was going to be - he added, "We have laws remember? Laws against imprisoning a wizard in Azkaban without a trial?"  
  
"Of course, of course," Cynewulf said, but something in his tone said that he was agreeing merely to humor Harry. "I wish you best of luck then, Mr. Potter."  
  
tbc.  
  
NOTES:  
  
1.) Cynewulf Ansericarnosus: The editor's name is an amalgamation of the name of an Anglo-Saxon poet (Cynewulf) and the Latinized form of the German surname Gutenberg. The first is in honor of the Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf, one of the few identifiable composers of Old English poetry (he works his name into his poems using Old English runic characters), and well, I think Cynewulf is a damned cool name. The second is from the ever-beloved Gutenberg of printing press fame.  
  
2.) I'm not sure what the ethics regarding the confidentiality of sources is in British journalism. Apologies if Cynewulf is being decidedly American in his concern.  
  
Next time: The Ministry of Magic vs. Ronald Weasley... and Draco Malfoy. 


	13. Chapter Thirteen

Ah, unlucky thirteen... I apologize for the horrific delay in updating, but between various holiday things, the beginning of the new semester, and the spontaneous disintegration of my old computer (and the three-week delay before I got the new one), 'Metamorphosis' has received the short end of the writing stick.  
  
Thank you to those of you brave and patient enough to stick with the working-on-two-years-now WIP :-). You are teh Good, yo.  
  
----  
  
+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+  
  
(Ovid)  
  
CHAPTER THIRTEEN  
  
All was silent.  
  
They stood in the narrow, chilly alley and listened. All they heard was the scrabbling of rats in the shadows, deafening in the unexpected quiet. It was, Harry thought, like waiting -- *something* hovered, an aura like malice or unfocused fury, like the air before a storm broke. The bit of Diagon Alley he could see was utterly still; not a soul moved in it, and aside from the rats there was no sound.  
  
"Either they've gone to the Ministry, or have been scared indoors," Fortius said. He fished about in one capacious pocket and produced another portkey, a battered fedora this time, with an unpleasant-looking rind of green about the brim. Harry eyed it suspiciously. Catching Harry's expression, Fortius held up the fedora and said, "This'll take us as close as we can get to the Ministry -- there's no Portkeying in there, of course, but it'll be close enough – there's no good way to Apparate close enough, at least, not without setting off all kinds of alerts. And if there's trouble, I'll get us through."  
  
Standing there in the cramped confines of the alley, Harry was forcibly reminded of sitting next to Fortius in the carriage ride up from the docks to Azkaban. Even still and silent as he habitually was, Fortius radiated an air of harnessed physical power – the kind that could crush Harry Potter like a tin can, with or without a wand. Glancing upward he saw masked anger in Fortius' dark eyes, an anger that mirrored that in Lavender's, and he wondered how close Fortius was to letting that power slip.  
  
"Are you ready, Harry?" Lavender asked. Her words broke into his reflection, but not harshly, for behind the anger and determination in her expression there was an unexpected kindness.  
  
Harry thought suddenly of unexpected allies. Luna and Ginny and Neville, all three of them unlikely compatriots in his early days… and now it seemed he was to have two more breaking the rules with him, a serious-faced woman he'd known from school days and the other a giant of a man – and both, despite their initial hostility and his taciturnity, were very nearly not only allies, but friends.  
  
/You can say the same thing about Draco, can you not?/  
  
Draco – never an ally, no never that, but a friend… and maybe more, if fate was kind.  
  
Harry placed both hands on the fedora.  
  
* * *  
  
When they arrived at the Ministry much later – for Fortius' idea of 'close' meant a twenty-minute, desperate run with Harry's leg pounding in agony – it was to chaos.  
  
The half-giants and their allies had been by, for several streetlamps were bent, a few already-battered cars overturned, and windows smashed through. Deep, foot-shaped gouges marked the asphalt, where something huge and heavy had gone stalking – "A grendel," Fortius observed, kneeling briefly to inspect the prints. "That would be Grim, at my guess."  
  
Now, though, the giants were not visible. Harry wondered fearfully where they had gone, and if their destruction had spread any farther. He stared at the crowd surrounding the Ministry building, a huge and seething mass of cloaks and pointed hats, and more frightening than the size of the mob was the sound that went up from it – a discordant buzz that might have been formed of words, but now took on the quality of an incoherent, animalistic series of growls and shrieks. Through the mob moved Ministry wizards, their commands for order drowned by the angry swell of sound about them.  
  
Papers scattered down the street, mixing with other debris. One, blown by the idle breeze, caught against Harry's ankle, and he knelt to pick it up.  
  
"AUROR WEASLEY IMPRISONED FOR TREASON," the headline screamed.  
  
In smaller, more subdued letters it added, "Fudge accuses war hero of espionage; former Death Eater Malfoy also charged. First in a series."  
  
"He works quickly," Lavender said, looking over Harry's shoulder at the article. There was a desperate lightness in her voice that did little to disguise the relief. She looked back to Fortius and said, in a voice so utterly different that it nearly chilled Harry's blood to hear, "We'll need your help now."  
  
Fortius wordlessly pushed past Harry. His black robe flowed about him like fluttering shadows, like ravens' wings, and he seemed to grow even taller, as though willing himself to overmaster the angry crush of people between himself and the Ministry door.  
  
Lavender pulled Harry into motion and mouthed, "Stay with me."  
  
Harry nodded.  
  
A few witches and wizards at the edge of the crowd seemed to take notice of Fortius, and they stepped aside hastily as he approached. From within the slowly-opening mass, Harry could see the beleaguered Ministry wizards exchanging looks and tentative half-smiles of relief. One gnarled, balding warlock took a few belligerent steps toward Fortius, his wand raised, but it needed only a glance from the huge man to send him stumbling back into anonymity.  
  
One of the Ministry wizards, a tall and nondescript man, was coming up to Fortius now, and his relief was obvious. It was also obvious he hadn't yet seen Lavender or Harry; all his attention was on his massive savior. The crowd, awed into silence by Fortius' looming, ominous presence, listened raptly, and the quiet was become as the quiet of the alley – a storm abated, waiting.  
  
"Fortius," the man said shakily, running a hand through sandy hair. He reached into a pocket and produced a checkered handkerchief which he rubbed over his face with a hand as unsteady as his voice. "Fortius," he said again, "am I glad to see you."  
  
"Ambrose," Fortius replied, his voice absolutely without inflection.  
  
"You'll never believe this," Ambrose continued, somewhat more strongly this time. He restored the handkerchief to his pocket. "Someone leaked the trial – we just got this huge mob, shown up on our doorstep, and it's been damn-all getting them to leave. There's been more arrests today, than… Well, I'll tell you later." The crowd buzzed with repressed anger, and Ambrose cut off abruptly. "Can I get you to help me out here?"  
  
"I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to go in myself," Fortius said.  
  
"Ah, er…" Ambrose blinked and licked his lips unhappily. Harry watched him fumble with the handkerchief again, but instead of swabbing his face, the man began to twist it around both hands. "Fortius, there's to be no one going in today – Fudge's orders and all. I'm sure you understand."  
  
"I do understand," Fortius answered.  
  
"Oh, good," Ambrose looked about ready to collapse with relief.  
  
"But I'm going in anyway," Fortius added.  
  
"What!" Ambrose dropped his handkerchief and took two steps back. Behind him, the other two Ministry wizards approached, drawn by their colleague's desperation. "Fortius, that isn't wise," Ambrose continued. "You know what happens if you disobey Fudge – and if you try, I'm going to have to arrest you for direct disobedience of a superior, and that means a summary two-week sentence in Azkaban."  
  
"You are welcome to try to arrest me," Fortius said, unmoved by either Ambrose, the threat, or the two wizards moving to bracket him, "and you're certainly welcome to try to Stun me, or Full-Body Bind me, if you like. But there *is* a relatively angry crowd here right now… I don't think they'd appreciate you interfering with someone come to help Ronald Weasley, or someone who's escorting Harry Potter."  
  
"Harry Potter?" The mob began to shift in a fit of agitation, and a hundred heads craned in Harry's direction.  
  
"By Merlin, it *is* Harry Potter!"  
  
"Harry Potter!"  
  
"Harry Potter," Ambrose murmured faintly. His eyes, a pale fish-eye blue, fixed on Harry with stunned disbelief for a moment before flickering back up to Fortius, and then to the crowd which had begun to press dangerously close about them, kept away only by an occasionally menacing glance from Fortius.  
  
"You're welcome to try to arrest him, too," Fortius said calmly, "but as Fudge placed him under house arrest – ineffectively – I don't think you're in a position to try it for yourself."  
  
"This is treason," Ambrose mumbled, but he was not looking at Fortius, or Harry, or at anyone at all.  
  
"What are we going to do, Ambrose?" one of the other wizards demanded. His Ministry badge glittered in the light, a symbol of an authority suddenly horrifically absent. He had his wand trained on Fortius, but his gaze darted between his target and his superior.  
  
"Yes, what are you going to do, Ambrose?" Fortius asked.  
  
"Shut up!" Ambrose thundered. "Anselm, Austin… stand down."  
  
Both wizards stared at their superior in disbelief, their wands still out. Ambrose tore his gaze from Fortius long enough to glare wildly at the two wizards and shout, "I *told* you to stand down, damn it, and I meant it!"  
  
The wizards lowered their wands suspiciously. "This is going to be our jobs," one of them said, "but you can bet I'm telling Fudge you let Fortius get away with this."  
  
"We're going to be sacked anyway," Ambrose said, "and I'd rather not be sacked when I'm lying in St. Mungo's after being crushed to smithereens." He didn't get any argument from that, although the rebellious expressions of Anselm and Austin spoke volumes. "Okay," he said now to Fortius, "have it your way… but when they send you up to Azkaban I'll be laughing."  
  
Fortius did not respond to that, but instead beckoned to Harry and Lavender over his shoulder. Lavender obediently sprang into action and Harry followed, and his hand automatically went to his wand as the crowd loomed about him. The angry, thunderous murmur had died, though, and in its place was a volley of questions in a dozen voices, tumbling over each other like rocks in a whirlpool. Hands reached out to him, and though they were friendly, Harry shrank away.  
  
"Mr. Potter, what's going on?"  
  
"They've got Ron Weasley in there! Are you helping him out?"  
  
"What's with Malfoy? How's he mixed in this?"  
  
"They said something about Severus Snape!"  
  
On and on it went and Harry plowed resolutely through the sea of bodies. Lavender stayed next to him, immovable as a rock, as stern and stubborn in her own way as Fortius who strode on ahead. The mob parted around him like waves on a reef, but flowed in close again, and it was only the sight of Fortius' chest and head and shoulders looming above like a beacon that gave Harry any sense of where they went – it was that close and oppressive. Scent overwhelmed him, the breath of the crowd and the questions that breath carried. He passed through it, reaching down into himself –   
  
-- and they were through the doors. Fortius ignored the drop-box, and three badges reading 'WEASLEY-MALFOY TRIAL' fell to the floor unacknowledged.  
  
The main lobby of the Ministry building was silent and cool, echoing and strange in its quietness next to the chaos of the street. Fortius paused then to straighten his robes and stow his wand, then turned to them.  
  
"I can only guess where they're holding the trial; it'll be in the lower levels, down where the trials were held in the last war."  
  
"Makes sense," Harry said. He coughed and took two deep breaths, steadying himself against the memory of that room – it had not been the room of his childhood trial, but an altogether different place, with an older and deeper menace. "Fudge would want it there…it seems like him."  
  
"In any case, we're going to have to be quick," Lavender added. "I wouldn't put it past Ambrose to actually think of somehow getting word to Fudge of what happened… and we'll need to be well on our way before Fudge can do something about preventing anyone from reaching the chambers."  
  
/The chambers./ Harry shivered. How many times had he seen Death Eaters down there, some of them his own classmates, down in that echoing, forbidding room? /The accused stands in the center of the star, and his accusers ring him at the perimeter of the circle that contains the star. His defender, if he has one, may only enter the circle once to speak. If the accused is guilty, he is bound and transported immediately to Azkaban. If he is innocent, he is released to the custody of his defender./  
  
Some had been grimly silent as their sentences had been read. Some had pleaded on their knees, had offered anything and everything for their release. Others proclaimed their guilt openly, and named other crimes of which they had not been convicted. Others had insisted upon their innocence, some bitterly and some desperately, and had said surely there had been some mistake, some conspiracy, some anything, for they were innocent.  
  
/But the offender is never innocent; only the guilty are brought into the Court of the Star./  
  
"I know the way," Harry said through a throat tight with fear and memory. "I've been down there before."  
  
"Right," Lavender said softly. "Let's go then."  
  
Through the silent passageways they went, through hallways in which the only sounds were their footsteps and anxious breaths, Harry's uneven dragging gait, Lavender's lighter tread, the heavy, grim footfalls of Fortius behind them. Harry felt his heart begin to match itself to Fortius' pace, slowing to that steady, even measure, and as it did so his breathing came easier, and then at last the clearing of his mind, so that he felt much as he did as he would fall from some high place – fall, and then, confident in his own power, change into his hawk-self and ride the wind.  
  
With unerring memory he led them, for he had walked these ways many times in the waking world, and many more times in the dreams that haunted the short years after the war. At the edges of his mind thoughts of Hermione and the Weasleys hovered, and Ron lying sick and helpless in his hospital bed, Draco pale, his fair hair like a guttering candle in the oppressive blackness of the prison hallway. He took those thoughts and fed them into the stern, quiet resolve growing within him.  
  
/It's time,/ he told himself. /You can't run anymore./  
  
They were heading downward now, down and down through winding stairways and twisting halls. The air about them became colder, heavy with the chill of the grave and of death. /Ron and I in the tunnel going to the Chamber of Secrets,/ Harry thought. Dust and cobwebs surrounded them, grey and clinging tendrils like the fingers of ghosts. /Two more turns to the left now, and right at the symbol of the scales./  
  
He took the next two lefts, conscious of Lavender and Fortius behind him, and then he saw the rude carving of balance scales worked into the capstone of an arch. That was the last right, leading down a grey hallway lit by sputtering grey-lit torches, with a door at the end.  
  
There were no protections placed on the door, Harry knew, not now. There had not been, back at the end of the second war; there probably had not been ever since whatever timelost wizards and witches who constructed the Court had wrought their magic there. The Court was its own protection, a place of magic poorly understood even by those who used it. Harry was no scholar, but he doubted Hermione understood it either.  
  
/No magic can be worked in the Court, save the magic of the Court itself. It judges the guilty and sends him to his punishment. Nothing is hidden from the Court; in the center of the Star is the eye of justice, and the eye sees all./  
  
They stopped halfway down the hall. Harry felt Lavender and Fortius at his back, both solid and reassuring presences. Lavender touched him on his shoulder, and he felt her lean close to speak into his ear.  
  
"We can't go in with you; we'll need to be out here, to deal with anyone Fudge or Ambrose might bring to stop you," she whispered. Her breath was very warm in the chill, crypt-like air about them. "Remember, your wand won't work in there – it's other magic you'll need."  
  
He turned back to look at her, puzzled. "Other magic?"  
  
She smiled faintly. "The guilty is allowed one defender," she said simply. "In the past, no one would dare step forward for any of the Death Eaters – but that'll change now, I expect. Use it."  
  
And her fingers twined, all unexpectedly, through his, and squeezed. He felt the heavy impact of Fortius' hand on his shoulder, and again the thought came to him that unexpected allies were perhaps the best kind.  
  
"Good luck," Fortius said, and Lavender echoed him.  
  
Harry nodded ands moved away. One step, two, three more, and then he was at the door to the Court, his hand upon the latch. He stared at it a moment, seeing how pale and fine-boned it was in the washed-out light, and noted distantly how it didn't shake.  
  
The latch gave way beneath his touch, and the door opened smoothly on oiled hinges. He stepped through, gathering control around him as best he could, remembering the times he had stepped through this very door to see what he saw now, or something very like it.  
  
Almost everything was just as he remembered. Five great pedestals loomed up, roughly carved and misshapen, and graven with symbols and signs whose meaning had been long devoured by oblivion. They ringed a circle that had been carved into the floor with astonishing smoothness and accuracy, considering the crudeness of the pedestals that stood about it, and drawn inside the circle with that same precision was a five-pointed star, and the pedestals were positioned at each of these points. The lines of star and circle pulsed with a faint radiance, a radiance that would have been warm and welcoming had not the Court been so forbidding.  
  
And had not Ron Weasley stood in the center of the Star.  
  
He stood, but barely, held up only by force of will. In the light, which was the same lifeless grey of the hall, his face seemed as the face of a spirit, or a face seen through a grey, translucent veil. Even from his place beyond the edge of the circle, Harry could see the shaking of limbs, the protestation of the body against the will, and the evidence of that will in the fever-bright, determined eyes that fixed on his chief accuser.  
  
Cornelius Fudge sat atop one pedestal with his back to Harry, robed in deepest black. He was saying something now, in a tone of bitter regret.  
  
"… and how is it, I ask the Court, that one of the brightest and most talented among us would be led astray?"  
  
"A pertinent question." Harry recognized the voice, and then the owner, a slim woman with graying hair and calculating eyes. Sprenger, it was; he didn't know her first name.  
  
"Indeed." Summers now, another familiar judge, although Harry couldn't see him.  
  
"Who else among us was the brightest? The most talented?" Fudge asked. He paused a moment, and tension built around the answer. "*Voldemort*, my fellow judges, and none other. How easy must it have been for Draco Malfoy to corrupt a talented, ambitious mind? Who knows – perhaps Mr. Weasley was already deep in their councils by the time this plot came to light."  
  
Sprenger tapped a long finger against her lip, and the silence drew out. "How do you respond, Mr. Weasley?"  
  
Ron stood frozen a moment, and Harry felt himself gripped by the same immobility. And as his friend, whose eyes had seemed locked onto Fudge, looked away and turned to address Sprenger, his gaze caught on Harry – caught and held, and the expression on his face was at once gratitude, joy, disbelief, confusion, and fear.  
  
"Harry!" he cried.  
  
"Ron – "  
  
Fudge and the four other judges whipped around on their pedestals. The Minister was pale with shock, but a dangerous redness leached up from his collar. His hands tightened on his robe, having nowhere else to go – a wand would be useless here. And there, like a vision, at the far edge of the circle was Minerva McGonagall, her hands gripping her skirts.  
  
"Mr. Potter!" she said, a half-whisper strangled by surprise.  
  
"*Potter*," Fudge spat. The name held a world of venom in it, poison and hatred and fury at being thwarted. The Minister seemed about to continue, but checked himself fiercely. "Mr. Potter," he continued, his words now a parody of civility, "you have been placed under close arrest. What are you doing out of it?"  
  
"I've come to defend my friends," Harry said.  
  
Fudge's small eyes glittered dangerously, and for a moment Harry felt a twinge of fear. /Don't,/ he told himself fiercely. /Don't ever fear this man./  
  
"Defend, you say? There *is* no defense here – a hope for mercy only," Fudge replied. "I regret to say, then, that you will be imprisoned in Azkaban for nothing."  
  
"Only if you have your way in this." Harry took a deep breath, and made himself look into the apoplectic, fury-engorged face of Cornelius Fudge. "And I intend to see that you won't."  
  
"That is a large claim," said the fourth judge who sat to Fudge's left. He too had greying hair, but it was thick and fell below his shoulders like the mane of a grey lion. Harry looked up at him, deliberately ignoring Fudge's hiss of frustration, and into the seamed, pale face. "I am Richard Kramer, Mr. Potter. I trust you have some evidence to prove yourself? Otherwise I fear it will go very much as the Minister says."  
  
"I do," Harry said. He reached into his robes and found the journals stowed safely in their inner pocket. He knew them well now, the creases in the leather binding, the roughness of cheaply-cut parchment. They were not large volumes – they were rather small, for Severus Snape had little been in the habit of recording his thoughts or feelings – but they seemed suddenly very heavy, carrying perhaps far more than Severus had originally thought they might.  
  
He told Kramer about them as he handed them up, about why they were written and by whom – Kramer's eyebrows rose a bit at that – and at the last, how they had come into his possession, and what interest Fudge had taken in them.  
  
"He was within his rights," Kramer said absently, thumbing through one journal. "Under wizarding law, any document naming an individual as a Death Eater can be used as evidence in trial."  
  
"But what if it *wasn't*?" Harry persisted. He glanced appealingly at Minerva, cursing that he could not properly say what he wished.  
  
And his old Professor, brilliant, clever Minerva, picked it up. "I believe what Mr. Potter means is, these were intended to be used as evidence, but not in trial – rather for summary imprisonment," she said, staring with cold hostility at Fudge. "And this, *honored* judges—" in Minerva's mouth, 'honored' became like a whip "—is directly against our laws. Against *Ministry* laws, laws made to prevent us from becoming like those who persecuted us."  
  
"I can't believe it," Ron murmured. He seemed frail, lost and alone, ringed by menacing spikes of rock. He looked up at Fudge. "Was that what it was for? Truly?"  
  
"What else?" Fudge said, waving a hand dismissively. "Did you think I was honestly interested in it for any other reason? What would meaning would the outpouring of Severus Snape's blighted heart have for me otherwise?" He turned back to Harry. "As for that, you'll notice I have been kind enough to grant trials to your friend and Malfoy."  
  
"Perhaps because you could not be assured of Mr. Potter's silence – or mine," Minerva said from across the circle.  
  
"Fortius and Lavender will be willing to confirm what I've told you," Harry said to Kramer. "They had originally been part of what Fudge – I mean the Minister – had been planning."  
  
"They were your old colleagues?" This was a dark-haired man, on Fudge's right this time.  
  
"Yes, sir," Ron said faintly. "Old friends."  
  
"They were assigned to… ah, keep watch on Mr. Potter, is that correct?"  
  
"Apparently… I wouldn't know." Ron stared bitterly at Fudge. "That arrangement was made without my knowledge."  
  
"A change of heart, then," the dark-haired man murmured thoughtfully. "I wonder what brought that on."  
  
"Friendship, sir." The word jolted out of Harry before he knew he had spoken it.  
  
"You say friendship?" The dark judge turned to him, and the smile upon his face was faint and inscrutable. "I would be interested to hear that defense, Mr. Potter."  
  
"I suppose the court would say it *is* no defense," Harry said. He met Ron's gaze, longing to go to him although he knew he could not enter the circle, not now. "But friendship… I was once told by friend that a friend is always worth it. I know Fortius and Lavender consider Ron a friend, and whatever they've done for him and will do for him will be justified in their eyes. And in mine, sir."  
  
"If we could acquit on the basis of noble sentiment," Sprenger said briskly, "we would have dismissed this long ago, Dominic. But as it is, I am extremely reluctant to prosecute a former hero of the war. Do these journals name him? Is he connected with the Death Eaters in any other way?"  
  
"He was caught consorting with Draco Malfoy!" Fudge snapped. "He has refused to reveal the nature of his communications, the content of correspondence exchanged with him, and admits that off-duty time was spent in his company – knowing, my fellow judges, that to associate with a known Death Eater is punishable by termination and imprisonment."  
  
"The Minister is correct," Dominic told Ron. The tone was kindly but stern as stone, and Harry sensed that this man – a man whom a moment ago Harry would have thought had been persuaded by the invocation of friendship, or perhaps some deeper awareness to go against Fudge – was not to be moved by pleading or platitudes. "You have so far not answered these questions to our satisfaction; answer them truthfully and it will turn out the better for you."  
  
"I…" Ron swallowed and turned to Harry, desperation on his face.  
  
Harry's first instinct was to demand Ron not say a word – /Not a thing about it, Ron, please don't say a word – don't you *dare* speak of it!/ – and he very nearly acted on it. He wanted to keep that secret close, hidden away as something rare and precious, untouched by Fudge's distrust or the opinion of the world – it was possessiveness and fear both, the unwillingness to acknowledge what lay between himself and Draco, for it was this that lay at the heart of Ron's actions.  
  
/Stop being selfish./  
  
The thought was like a slap, sharp and bracing, or cold air. He remembered Ron's pale, weary face on a dirty hospital pillow, the dank and oppressive stench that spoke not of healing but of death. And he remembered Ron's eyes closing, the weary smile, and the absent words – perhaps not so absent now, spoken to remind Harry of a truth so basic he had forgotten what it was.  
  
/Knight to H3./  
  
"You're always worth it, Ron," he said hoarsely. "Go on… tell them."  
  
And so Ron did.  
  
tbc.  
  
Notes:  
  
It's not really important, but the three Ministry wizards, Ambrose, Anselm, and Austin, are all named after early medieval theologians; 'Austin' is the typical shortened form of 'Augustine.'  
  
The court in which the trial takes place bears little relation to the chambers in which Harry was tried in OotP, I know, but the divergence is on the grounds of attempting to convey a certain ominous quality to wizarding judicial ceremonies, especially the one Fudge is attempting to carry out. Instead, it's loosely based on the Court of the Star, one of the courts established in England to try suspected heretics.  
  
The judges' names are taken from various prominent figures in the long, proud, and distinguished tradtion of witch-hunting and inquisition. Dominic is from St. Dominic, founder of the Dominican Order which eventually became one of the early monastic orders to participate in the Inquisition. Kramer and Sprenger are named after the co-authors of the 'Malleus Maleficarum' ('The Hammer of Witches'), a tract explaining how to hunt, find, capture, try, and execute a suspected witch. Summers is named after Rev. Montague Summers, who translated the 'Malleus Maleficarum' into English in response to what he saw as the looming diabolical threat posed by Communism in the early 20th century.  
  
Next: Draco. 


	14. Chapter Fourteen

Second-to-last chapter, methinks. There may or may not be an epilogue, depending on what gets accomplished in the next installment, so I just wanted to take this opportunity right now to thank all of you who have hung on for what's going on two years now. For a long time I thought I'd never get this finished--fics that stall this long tend to be a lingering pain for me--so to bring this to conclusion, and to know there are still people out there not only reading but taking the time to be supportive and encouraging, is definitely a good feeling.  
  
snuggles all of y'all  
  
----  
  
Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.  
  
(Ovid)  
  
CHAPTER FOURTEEN  
  
Harry had never been given much to faith in his life – too much changed, to place his trust in many things, or many people. But there were certain people he'd learned would never waver, and Ron was one, and even though his friend had looked ready to fall, there'd been defiance still and although his voice had been weak, it was steady and determined as it marched on through years of pain, the twisted threads of an old story, and in a darkened inn room Harry's mind followed the path of Ron's words.  
  
/I had been assigned to supervise Draco Malfoy when he was first exiled, and I guess anyone who knows me would know I hated doing it, because I couldn't stand Malfoy, but since I had to do it anyway, I figured I might as well do it right. And so I kept an eye on him and his communications, and stopped by whenever I had to, and I guess after a while of doing that we just ended up talking, and I ended up thinking about what it was like to be him, out there all by himself... You can't look through a person's stuff and watch his life without coming to feel what he feels, and get a sense of what he thinks./  
  
Harry stretched out on his bed, wincing as sore muscles refused to relax. He very nearly thrummed with energy, a nervousness that refused to dissipate. It was, he thought, like coming down off the high of a Quidditch match – even years and years removed from his last game, he could still recall the hum of excitement in him, how he would lie awake that night and replay the game in his head and his body until adrenaline vanished and sleep came. There was also a certain element of queasiness, and he swallowed that determinedly.  
  
The room was dark, save the light from the moon and stars, and outside all of Diagon Alley was silent. In the common room below him were the muffled thumps and conversation of the Leaky Cauldron's patrons, but with the still air about him, Harry felt insulated from the comings and goings of Tom's evening clientele, but his thoughts still crowded the room with their own presence. He shifted, tried to get comfortable, felt again a nervous jolt in his stomach, a tingle of disbelief.  
  
/Oh, Ron./ The thought was half fondness, half despair.  
  
Harry gave up sleep, turned over on his side and stared into the darkness for a bit, saw Ron standing there like a wraith, talking, spinning out the truth.  
  
/He told me about how he'd run into Harry once, during the war, and he'd had him dead to rights – those were his words, just that – but let him go, because he couldn't say the words, couldn't kill him... And I asked him why he couldn't do it, and Draco said it was because he just couldn't, and he didn't have a good explanation for it beyond that. But I knew right then what he meant, because... oh, damn it... Harry, I'm sorry. I knew what he meant because there have been times when I've done stuff for Harry, and not wanted to say why, not even to myself.  
  
/But he's worth it, and that's what I told Draco. And he looked at me, and said "Yeah, you're right. Weasley."/  
  
Summers had questioned Ron on that, but Ron had refused to answer much past, "Harry's my friend, and he'll always be my friend." And Summers had probably realized he wouldn't get much more – or maybe he didn't need any more, because there'd been a fierce light in Ron's eyes that had spoken more than perhaps any words could – and let Ron continue.  
  
/Well, that gave me a lot to think about, although I didn't really want to think about it much. I mean, Draco and Harry? It was pretty disturbing at first, and I kept it to myself for a while – didn't even tell Hermione about it. But then Harry ran across Severus' diaries, and when we couldn't get them decoded, I realized what I needed to do. It wasn't easy, but I wrote Draco a note and asked him to come and help. Part of me hoped he wouldn't, but I couldn't in good conscience not want to help. Harry's my mate, and he'd been having a hard time of it lately, and he'd said some things – and I guessed that there was maybe some stuff he needed to work out about Draco, and that it had to do with that time they'd met and Draco hadn't killed him.  
  
/I almost called the whole thing off, though, when I thought that maybe the Minister wanted to use the diaries as evidence, maybe to find some more Death Eaters he couldn't get a hold of, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I needed to do it – I'd do anything to expose what was happening, to maybe make something right when everything had been so horribly wrong for so long./  
  
"And what was that, Mr. Weasley?" Sprenger had asked, her voice smooth as ice, and as cold.  
  
Harry swallowed, thinking of Ron's answer, swallowed to keep back tears and the invocation of his friend's name. He remembered standing there, helpless, waiting for Ron's answer.  
  
/For a long time I'd believed people were what they were, and could never change. But when we got Severus' diaries, and I was able to read them, I realized that maybe that wasn't the case... and that it was possible for people to be different than what they were. But they need a reason to change, else they won't see why they need to, or will be too afraid... Harry would never go to Draco, and Draco couldn't go to Harry, and they'd both die believing the worst of each other, or at least not knowing the truth. It seemed a good risk, to make a friend happy and to... to prove Severus right./  
  
"So you have taken it upon yourself to reform the entire Death Eater population?" Kramer now, and wonder of wonders he hadn't been sarcastic, but the question had been honest.  
  
/I don't think I'd be so bold as to presume that, sir./  
  
Ron had been looking decidedly weary by this point, his muscles quivering with the effort of remaining upright. But this room had been the center of ritual for hundreds of years, and ritual dictated the accused stand before those who charged him. Fudge had been watching, a sly and triumphant smile teasing the corners of his lips, and oh, how Harry had wanted to pull his wand and hex it right off him.   
  
But Ron had stood, defying Fudge's superiority and his own weakness.  
  
/My parents taught me about life-debts, and I reckon I owed Harry one – Lord knows he got me out of enough scrapes when we were kids, but more than that he's been my best friend for years, and we got each other through dark times. Those are things I reckon you can't really pay back, except by being as good a friend as you can, and I saw that my friend needed me... And Harry had a debt of his own, and I know what it's like, to have something unresolved hanging over you, and needing to do something about it./  
  
"So sacrificing your career seemed the appropriate answer? Risking imprisonment? A trial?"  
  
/If it would help Harry, yessir. In a second. And I did./  
  
Lying in the dark room, Harry sighed and stared at the ceiling. Every time he'd heard Ron insist that the danger to his career was of no consequence, he hadn't quite believed him. There were things you worked hard for and never sacrificed, and Ron had worked for his Auror position, had won it by blood and unshakable determination, and to give it up... Until he heard Ron tell that judge, Dominic it had been, what he'd been telling Harry all along, he hadn't listened. Whenever Ron had said it in the past, he'd felt deeply ashamed, but now he was humbled, turning the memory over in his mind.  
  
/I can't repay you for that,/ he thought, smiled a bit, thinking he was no stranger now to that sort of thing, being unable to find adequate compensation. But maybe some debts were like that... you never paid them back, because you couldn't, because your friend refused the debt, or let it stand in such a way that the only payment required was to live, and to live happily.  
  
Ron had continued at Dominic's prompting: "You'd had a conversation approximately five days before the visit to the Malfoy estates with Neville Longbottom, over fireplace. Mr. Longbottom has been kind enough to forward some of your medical history to us."  
  
/No,/ Harry thought. /Please, I don't want to think about this now. Let me sleep./  
  
But Ron's answer would chase him into dreams if he did not, and to replay the memory of words while seeing Ron's face would be too much.  
  
/I'd gotten in a bit of trouble during the war – taken prisoner for a couple days, and the Death Eaters weren't exactly gentle.../  
  
Harry'd known nothing of that, not until Ron spoke of it, and he'd wondered in a distant way what must have happened in a person's life, to make him say things like "Cruciatus" so easily, and confirm what Neville had told the judges already – that he'd been seriously hurt, his heart nearly giving out from the pain, and had gone back anyway as soon as he could get permission from St. Mungo's, to put himself in danger again.  
  
/And I hadn't been feeling well, exactly, for a couple weeks, and when I talked to Nev – er, I mean Dr. Longbottom – he said there was still damage from the Cruciatus, and it was only getting worse. He said I should think about leaving as soon as I could, resign and all that, but I couldn't, not until I'd made sure Harry and Draco were okay... because I knew that if I'd left, there wouldn't be anyone to make sure they'd had their chance, or to make sure the journals got to where they needed to be. And then, well, everything backfired, and I'm sure you know the rest of the story./  
  
"Oh, Ron." He'd whispered that, when Ron had explained himself, had realized finally, the significance of a thousand little things. The day he'd gone to see about the letter, Ron's pale face, the absent circling of his hand over his chest, /I'm dying here,/ his friend had said, as a joke. Harry saw in painful clarity that hand moving over fabric, pressing down into the flesh, as though to surround the pain, contain it, soothe it into nothingness. And it had not worked. What had the curse done to him when he'd been taken prisoner by his own people? He shivered, thinking about it – the mind shied away from possibilities.  
  
There'd been silence in the room after that, silence save for the pounding of Harry's heart. He'd stood frozen, not knowing what to do, to say. Fudge even seemed shocked, his featureless, flabby mouth open, fish-like, gimlet eyes wide. Minerva had been crying – tears from a rock, it had been. The other judges had simply sat there, soundless.  
  
"You make a strong case for friendship, Mr. Weasley," Dominic had said at last, "if not for common sense."  
  
/It seems like friendship is the best sense of all, sir. I don't regret what I did./  
  
"Do you understand that your actions could have you dishonorably discharged? Imprisoned?" Sprenger this time, cold and merciless. "A strong case for friendship, indeed, or perhaps insanity."  
  
/I knew that all along, ma'am, and I was willing to take that risk. I still am./ And Ron had been pale, so horribly pale, and Harry had felt as terrible as Ron looked, caught in the grip of a terrible expectation. Time crawled over his skin, palpable and agonizingly slow in its passage. /But I know what I saw, when I talked with Draco, and when I saw him at Hogwarts with Harry... you can have the testimony for that from Professor McGonagall and the others, I suppose. The only treachery in the whole business wasn't mine, or Malfoy's or Harry's... it was Fudge's, using Severus' diaries like he did, things never intended to incriminate anybody./  
  
"That much is true," Kramer had said, breaking his silence. The journals rested before him, opened to one page. "Severus did not want his journals used to provide evidence against his former comrades – and the investigations proved as much, I think. No... there is evidence of a different sort provided, I think, and it seems to square with Mr. Weasley's assertions as to Mr. Malfoy's character."  
  
"Oh, come now," Fudge had scoffed. "Surely we won't believe the word of a former Death Eater, if we're looking for character references."  
  
"You were willing enough to believe him to incriminate people," Harry had said, surprising himself. Even now, in the dark, he felt the thrill of the attack, the surprise and consternation on Fudge's face, the pride in Minerva's. "I read those journals, sir, read them all, and I agree with Judge Kramer – Severus wanted to believe people could change, because he had."  
  
"'There is a line,'" Kramer had said softly, his voice nearly a chant in the still air of the room, "'a place one stands, at which there is a choice to stay as one is and refuse all change, or to cross over and become something so wholly unfamiliar that the thought of doing so is incomprehensible. To stay on one side is like death, or a slow, rotting misery, but to cross and become the unknown is its own death. What am I, if I am not myself?  
  
"'I have come to that line now, I think. I stand at the very edge of it.'" Kramer had looked up from the book and directly into Fudge's small, furious eyes. "He did cross it, Cornelius. He saved us all, at Cornwall – if he hadn't drawn Voldemort's attention there, we never would have finished arranging Hogwarts' defenses. You don't thank a man for that kind of sacrifice by smearing him."  
  
"You always did like Snape too much," had been Fudge's reply, half a snarl.  
  
"Gentlemen!" Sprenger had interrupted, her voice sharp with demand. "The issue here is not Draco Malfoy, or Severus Snape, it is Ronald Weasley."   
  
"It seems to me that the three cannot be separated at this point," Summers had said. "The guilt of Mr. Weasley may well determine that of Mr. Malfoy – and his innocence as well." His gaze had flickered over Harry. "And Mr. Potter is, of course, tangled up in all of this. A truly fascinating knot."  
  
"One verdict will not untangle it," Kramer had said irritably, "and we will certainly not begin to solve things if we do not press ahead with the matter at hand." She'd turned then, to Ron, who had looked squarely at her and not flinched at all. "Time presses, Mr. Weasley, and there must be a sentence passed."  
  
/The judges all drew their wands, Fudge with a flourish of satisfaction and a smirk of triumph directed at Harry and Ron. Sprenger began to chant the spell, the old Latin rolling from her mouth in rich waves, and the lines of the star engraved in the floor began to glow. A pulse of energy filled the room, sweeping through Harry, tingling, reaching down to the depths of him, and he knew in an instant the nature of the spell – to seek the deepest heart of the accused, to find the truth behind the charges against him – betrayal, treason against the Ministry, things which Ron had never thought to do, could never do.  
  
/The lines of the star pulsed, shifted, changed to a white so bright it hurt Harry to look at them. And Ron, a spectre, red hair glowing like witch-light in the glare, stood in the center of it, and there was no fear in his face, no resignation, nothing, no, not even life./  
  
Harry lay in his bed, fingers twined in the sheets, not wanting to wipe the tears that coursed down his face. He thought of Ron's battered, aching heart, wondered if maybe he knew what the sensation must be – surely this constriction, as though the muscle itself had frozen, or had been gripped by claws, must be what Ron felt, what he tried to soothe away with circles. He wanted suddenly to lift a hand, to push away the hand wound about his heart, but checked the impulse.  
  
/Ron, you always said I was always worth it, but this...? Why did you put yourself through it?/ Ron would always give him the same answer, ever and ever, without end – on his deathbed, the answer would not change – and Harry would never really fully understand it, only know that what his friend had offered him had been something rich, rare, beyond price.  
  
And maybe the spell had known that, too, or there was mercy in whatever magic drove it, for when the light subsided Ron stood there, and the look on his face was wondering.  
  
/"Ronald Weasley, you have been found not guilty of the charges made against you by Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic. You have been cleared of the charge of consorting with Death Eaters with intent to undermine the Ministry, and to bring harm to the person of the Minister of Magic in particular." That had been Dominic, dark and inscrutable.  
  
"Although you have been cleared," he continued, "there is the matter of your fitness for duty... And it is our determination that you be discharged from service..."/  
  
The memory of the words released the tension in Harry's chest; his heart convulsed, his breath caught and left him in a gasp that sounded forlorn and small in the darkness of his room. The words had been simple, so simple, and yet incomprehensible – in the moment, it had seemed that Dominic had spoken in a foreign language, or had been shouting down a tunnel, the words distorted and meaningless until they reshaped themselves and found their meanings once again, and the meanings were absolution, innocence, and freedom.  
  
Harry'd been beyond tears at that point, had been on the point of defiance – leaping in to defend Ron, to defy the judges to take him away to Azkaban, when he'd realized what Dominic had said. /Ronald Weasley, you have been found not guilty.../ Not guilty, and oh God, Minerva'd been crying, hands clasped over her mouth as though to keep in the sobs, and Ron had stared a moment before falling limply to the floor, hair a bright wash of red against dark stone, and Harry had run to him, taken him in his arms and whispered a mixture of thanks and curses and promises.  
  
/Oh God, Ron, thank you... don't ever do this again... don't say it, Ron, please don't say it./  
  
"You're worth it," Ron had said, smiling slightly, the words little more than a whisper. Their hands had twined over Ron's heart, and Harry had felt the uncertain vibration beneath his fingertips. "I told you... I told you that you could do it. Save the day."  
  
"I didn't, Ron," Harry had protested.  
  
"You did," Ron insisted gently. "If you didn't want me to tell... about you and Draco, I mean... I never would have. Fudge never would have gotten it out of me. And I couldn't have said what I did, if you hadn't gotten those journals."  
  
Ron had stopped, his eyes closed, chest hitching on a breath. Mediwizards had been summoned, Neville leading the way, and Ron had been whisked off to St. Mungo's quick as that. And then there'd been Minerva to hug, Minerva to tell him, "You did do it, Harry," and to say with some of her old authority, "That was good work, Mr. Potter."  
  
There would be more that day – more heartache, and he would need time to sort through those events and work them out, but so much of the day was still raw him, and worrying at it would be to pick at a fresh wound, and there was so much more to be glad about now. Harry shut his eyes, took as deep a breath as he could manage. The air was cool, tinged with the night breeze from the open window, sweet despite the fact that the smoke and scent of London surrounded them. Maybe there was triumph flavoring things, suffusing him with a profound happiness, he didn't know... it'd been so long, so long since he'd felt this way: heady, victorious, truly bone-deep happy. Maybe never, he thought; there'd always been something detracting from the joy, the knowledge of loss and change, the way fortune metamorphosed, going from good to bad, joy to sorrow and loss and regret.  
  
And speaking of which... He opened his eyes, turned to look at the window and the silhouetted figure there. "Hey," he said softly, reluctant to break the stillness, afraid it might shatter with the fragility of a dream, "are you going to sleep tonight or tomorrow?"  
  
Draco was by the window, a dark shadow traced with silver by the starlight, and very still for a moment before he turned to face Harry.  
  
"It is tomorrow," he said, voice threading through the silence. Nevertheless he stood, a rustle of sound and blurry-edged in the darkness, and paced across the room to Harry's bedside to look down, eyes luminous and grey. "But I don't think I can sleep, Harry," he added, and there was softness, uncertainty in the words.  
  
"I can't either," Harry confessed. He grinned crookedly, moved over a bit so there was a larger space on one side, floundered in awkwardness for a moment before he said, "Come on... we can not sleep together tonight."  
  
He felt Draco's grin, although in the darkness he could not see it, and the slender form above him bent, lowered itself to the mattress, and slid under the covers. They negotiated for space with knees and elbows, settled at last into some kind of agreement, as much as could be made in a too-small bed with lingering uncertainty lying between them like a third partner. Harry could smell Draco's subtle scent, this close, and could not put a name to it, could only remember what it had been like to stand close to him, foreheads together, breathing each other's air as they were right now.  
  
There was something, Harry thought, to be said for simple presence. He thought back on the days and weeks of absence, the dreadful pain of missing his friends – of missing Draco, who in a short time had become inextricably entwined with his life, so necessary to it, and the consequent fullness of having him restored was enough to banish the fears of the day for the time being, to let him slide hands over Draco's shoulders and draw him close, and at last, to sleep.  
  
-to be concluded- 


	15. Chapter Fifteen

Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.  
  
(Ovid)  
  
CHAPTER FIFTEEN  
  
It was, Harry thought, like waking from a dream. All his life he had dreamed in terrifying clarity, and dreamscape was a place where pain had real, physical dimension to it – it was red and pervasive, as fierce in confusion and the dark as it was upon waking. There had been times when he'd felt the touch of dream-figures branding his flesh upon waking, phantom fingers touching him with real, tangible pressure; he'd heard his mother's screams and they'd echoed in his ears when he had woken.  
  
So when he thought back over the past few weeks, the sharpness of the images (Ron's hair red as blood, face pale as death, Fudge a squat and leering demon on his pedestal, the pale glow of Draco's face in the blackness, the judges' faces mask-like) did not fade. What had happened had been strange, distorted, and he'd followed their paths with the calm acceptance of their illogic, as the dreamer does, allowing himself to be led through the twisted lanes of his own mind.  
  
But he had not woken from it right away; even that one morning, with the sun filtering through the grime decorating the inn's window, with Draco pressed against him, warm, solid, one hand gripping one of his, hadn't been enough. In the first flush of realizing Draco was there, not dead, not in Azkaban, not back in cold exile, he hadn't known what to think, had clung instead to the insulation of unreality... and to Draco's hand, both anchors.  
  
/"You'll leave marks," Draco muttered sleepily, pulling his hand free and inspecting it for injury. "What do you want, Potter, me to complain you're mistreating me our first day out? Are you in that big a hurry to go back to the Ministry? God, we just got shut of the place."/  
  
And that had been what had done it, woken him up, hearing Draco's voice, warm and teasing in his ear – and how Draco'd tried after that Malfoy coldness, and it had failed so comically they'd both ended up laughing. And somewhere, mixed up in the laughter and relief and being young, had been Draco looking at him, very still suddenly, and then leaning in and kissing him... Harry'd almost flinched, startled, but it had been so easy to match his mouth against Draco's, to learn the pattern of his lips, the shush of breath over his cheek. Draco's hair had been rough as Harry had sifted it through his fingers, but the wash of morning light had made it fair, vibrant when moonlight had made it ghostly.  
  
He could have gone on light that all day – would have, except Draco had broken away and announced that he was hungry. And, as though summoned, there'd been a knock on the door and Ron and Hermione had appeared – Hermione wearing a disapproving expression, because Ron had talked his way out of observation for the morning. But Ron had said he needed to talk to Draco about something, before he left...  
  
/"You know, I probably should thank you, Weasley," Draco said, flat and expressionless.  
  
"Yeah, well, don't strain yourself," Ron answered. "Is 'thank you' even in your vocabulary?"  
  
"Thank you. Don't suppose 'you're welcome' is in yours?"  
  
"You're welcome."/  
  
And both of them had grinned at each other, Draco somewhat wryly and Ron with the unabashed Weasley grin and an evil light in his hazel eyes. He'd hugged Draco, who'd squeaked – most undignified, he complained later – and fought a bit before succumbing to the embrace and returning it.  
  
/"He needs this," Hermione confided to Harry. She had lost the fierceness of earlier, and her eyes were soft as she watched her fiery, red-haired husband talk with his former enemy in quiet tones. "He really did come to know Draco well – we talked about it a bit, when he first decided to help you, and then some more last night." She sighed. "Maybe I need it, too. There's been so much hatred for so long... I want to let go of it. Need to let go, I guess – you can't raise a family like that."  
  
"Thanks, Hermione," Harry said, slipping an arm about her shoulders. Hermione put an answering arm about his waist, frowned, said he was far too thin. And he started as the last part of her comment registered, and she turned to him with a teasing finger pressed to her lips and a light in her eyes.  
  
"Breakfast, then," Ron said, decisively. Trust a Weasley to pick up on the barest mention of food, of course, and they ended up bringing it up from Tom's kitchen, because the new Daily Prophet had broken and Cynewulf had made the best of a good day's headlines; already the streets were buzzing with the news, consternation at the havoc of Diagon Alley, a thousand voices floating up from the streets./  
  
- - -  
  
Now they were sitting in a different kind of sunlight, more generous, warmer in the flush of the afternoon. They'd finished restoring Draco's possessions to his home, and the house-elves had fixed what Fudge's team of Aurors and other officials had broken or destroyed. Harry had seen the dismay on Draco's face as he'd taken in the damage, the relief when some treasure had escaped confiscation, anger in a moment, when the grey eyes had gone flat and cold. He wondered that Draco's moods had suddenly become clear to him, when for so long they'd been a mystery... or maybe it was the old school-days contempt Draco had worn, mask-like, that had fallen away to reveal the emotions beneath.  
  
It had been three weeks since the Court had given their decision. Draco was to return to Malfoy Manor, and with Harry vouching for his behavior, would be allowed to "redeem his character," as Dominic had put it.  
  
"If Severus Snape believed you capable of it," he had said, "then we must believe you capable of it, too. Best of luck, Mr. Malfoy."  
  
"Thank you, sir," Draco had said, and genuine respect and gratitude had been in his voice.  
  
Harry found it difficult to think of that day; even with victory coloring the taste of it, the memories of the Court were still dark and forbidding, laced with a fear that even Draco's kisses, his touch – warm, pliant flesh on Harry's own – could not drug away. So he shied away from the memories, preferring to hold on to what was Now: mouths becoming more familiar with each other, hands bolder, and in the quiet of night the hush of breath over bare skin, moonlight shading and gilding the contours of muscle, a kinder darkness.  
  
What were they, anyway? Lovers? Harry wanted to laugh at the term, it was that unlikely, that absurd. Boyfriends? The same again. Friends, maybe... Companions. Friends. Of a sort, if you could call this half-transformed, fledgling thing friendship for lack of a better word, and he decided he would stay with that. His time here was drawing to a close; there was still a term to finish out, and so many things to do, and the question would stagnate, maybe, in the press of the real world and responsibility. He would visit, of course, but visiting would have to wait... He shook himself away from the future, and allowed himself the present. Now.  
  
And this Now had a different sort of satisfaction, sitting and pretending to be working on some papers Minerva had sent up to him, cup of tea at his elbow, Draco sprawled across the sofa with head on his lap, reading Snape's journals. He was reading in the sunlight, pale hair on fire like finest gold where it spread over Harry's jeans ("Ridiculous Muggle clothing," Draco had sniffed, before asking where he could find a pair), and it was hard for Harry to not card his fingers through it, to touch even simply and not with a request for more.  
  
"Hey," Draco said, breaking into Harry's reverie, "listen to this:  
  
"'I don't think I ever had quite so horrific a day as the day I discovered Harry Potter would be coming to Hogwarts. There is not room enough in the human head for the memories his name brought back, and there is certainly not enough anger and resentment sufficient enough to... to what? Sustain me? I was furious, of course: furious, at a man who was years dead, for making my life the hell that it was. I owed him nothing, for what he did to me in school; I owed him everything, for saving my life. And the form my debt took, ultimately, was his carbon-copy – a boy with all his attitude, his blithe way of trampling over anything and everything that got in his way.  
  
"'I could never decide if the Potter line was extraordinarily resilient or extraordinarily stupid: kick them down, and the buggers get back up again. Perhaps there was no beating James (or Harry – I admit this reluctantly) because they simply refused to acknowledge defeat. It's a sickening thought, really.  
  
"'So one day, in my bitterness, I told myself: "Let him taste it, let him know what it is like to be weak and helpless, at the mercy of a force so great not even his pride, his bravery can stand against it. Let him hear his own pleas, the echo of his own fear in his head, and let him know the futility of struggling against that which cannot be mastered. As the old song says,   
  
'/Hac in hora, sine mora cordum pulsum tangite quod per sortem sternit fortem mecum omnes plangite./'  
  
"'Except I will not be lamenting; I do not expect to see that day. But let it come.'  
  
"And then he talks about some of what Dumbledore had wanted him to do, but not much..." Draco stopped talking and looked up. Harry stared down at him, worried suddenly by the seriousness in Draco's face, but unable to look away.  
  
"Did you ever feel like that?" Draco asked quietly. "Crushed?"  
  
Harry opened his mouth to say of course not, that he'd known exactly how things were going to turn out. But the expression in the grey eyes demanded truth, and the lie was a shield. So Harry nodded, not trusting himself enough to speak, hoped that the gesture would be enough to satisfy Draco's curiosity.  
  
"But you kept going."  
  
"I..." Harry coughed, trying to clear the knot out of his throat. "I didn't want to," he confessed quietly. "I was terrified, and everything had been going wrong. Fudge had you and Ron, and practically the entire Ministry in his pocket. And then when I saw you two in Azkaban, it nearly killed me. Seeing you, and the hopelessness of that place."  
  
"But you kept going."  
  
"It hurt," Harry whispered. "Every day it hurt, not knowing."  
  
Draco sat up and twisted around on the couch to face Harry directly. "You saved me," he said softly, seriously, and in a tone that did not suffer Harry's negation. "You kept going – and I told you so many times that no one would have done that for me, not one of the Death Eaters, maybe not even my parents. That's not a small thing..." He trailed off, shook his head, and when he spoke again the light voice was thick, heavy with emotion: "That means... it means a lot to me, and I'm not going to let you weasel your way out of it, being all modest and crap."  
  
Harry smiled crookedly, touched the fair face with his fingertips, felt the tracery of cheekbone and jaw. "You were worth it," he said. /Thank you, Ron./ And then, with a flash of his old spirit: "I'm not going to let you weasel your way out of that one, either, being all modest and crap."  
  
"No one's ever accused a Malfoy of being modest," Draco said, leaning in. Harry smiled into the kiss, reveling in the familiarity of the mouth against his, the tongue delicately plying his lips open to slip inside. Draco's fingers laced through his hair, pulling him closer, and although the position was awkward, Harry leaned into Draco's body, felt the warm, vital heat of him.  
  
After a moment they broke apart, but still stayed close, breathing each other in, and Draco's fringe dusted across Harry's cheek, tickling him. And Draco, being evil, perverse, Draco, said into the silence:  
  
"We have Fudge to thank for this, you know."  
  
Harry leaned back, stared at Draco. Draco grinned back at him unrepentantly. "Fudge?" Harry managed to choke out after a moment, when shock loosened its grip enough for him to speak. "What in hell do you mean, Fudge?"  
  
"I mean," Draco said patiently, "we owe him a lot, really. The old bastard managed to do something right, even though he probably didn't mean to."  
  
"You're going to have to explain that."  
  
Draco sat back and crossed his legs, and the grin faded a bit as his voice shaded into seriousness. "I remember one of the judges at my trial – Sprenger, I think, maybe – saying that Fudge had gotten hold of Severus' journals because he thought maybe they would incriminate me, or other people. And you know, the second I heard that... I knew it was okay. Or, it would be okay... because I had read them, and I knew what was in them."  
  
He drew a breath and plunged on. "Fudge... he was reading Severus' journals for condemnation and retribution, maybe justice, or what passes for justice with him. And he found it, but it really wasn't the kind he was wanting. It was... it was simple truth, I guess. Severus just wrote the things; he didn't want power, or a reward, just to get things off his mind, and to let me know how he'd ended up the way he'd ended up." Draco shrugged. "And maybe he wrote it because he hoped, if I ever saw it, I'd change.  
  
"Azkaban was..." Shiver here, and Draco leaned back against Harry, resting along the curve of his torso. "It was so dark, so lonely – I thought so much there, trying not to know where I was. But I ended up thinking about all the people during the war, and what Severus said got all mixed in with it, and before I knew it..." He shook his head. "I was crying almost every day. I was seeing people who'd died during the war – my parents, other Death Eaters, people we'd captured. Anyone. Everyone. They came to me. Severus came to me."  
  
"Don't go back to that place," Harry whispered, pulling Draco tight against them. "I can't go back there."  
  
"I'm not," Draco said. "Never will. But I... I guess that's what I meant about Fudge. I changed, Harry... you changed me, guilt changed me. Everything. I had to step across that line, because it was either change or die however you die in Azkaban."  
  
Harry could only nod. What do you say, he thought, after something like that?  
  
"I'm not saying we should send the man a card or anything," Draco said, and Harry had to grin at the desperate lightness in his tone. "But you know, it's strange, how good things come with the bad."  
  
"It is." Harry was muttering the words into Draco's hair. "But you know... yeah, it's true. I've learned not to question that. Just let it be."  
  
- - -  
  
Evening drew on, and it was with regret that Harry looked out to see the fading sun. There were responsibilities pressing on him, even though he wanted desperately to stay... /You're running again,/ a small, accusing voice said. /Running, running. Stay./ He shrank from the thought. Staying was... was permanent. Too much was ingrained in him; he was made up of loss, unused to the idea of keeping. /Become used to it./  
  
/I... I can't,/ he thought despairingly. Saw that Draco was looking at him oddly, and the journals on his lap were closed.  
  
"Well, I should get going," Harry said at last. His voice was very small, thin and unsure in the shadows of the evening and the great room. "I've got tests to grade, and I'm sure Minerva will give me hell for making all the other professors do my work..."  
  
"I'm sure she will," Draco answered smoothly. He stood in a rustle of cloth, dusted himself off dramatically. "Come on," he said, gesturing for Harry to follow him, "I'll walk you out."  
  
Silently, Harry followed Draco through the empty halls. His footsteps echoed on marble tile, the sound of his breath – which seemed loud, all of a sudden – wrapped about the statues, the drapes, all the fine things that surrounded him. Draco walked ahead, another fine thing, and the light from the great hall windows was tinged red by the westering sun and painted his hair, the skin at the back of his neck, with radiance.  
  
They stopped at the door in the atrium and Draco opened it to the twilight. A cool evening wind brushed across Harry's skin, rich with the scent of the forest. Reluctantly, uncertain of what to do, he stepped outside, drew a breath with lungs that felt suddenly too tight, too small for such a thing as breathing. He turned around, saw Draco standing there, and he didn't know if it was the light, or his own fancy, the force of wishing, which made Draco's eyes glitter.  
  
Didn't know, wished he could ask, ached to do it – and why couldn't he, after these weeks together? /Ask him, ask him,/ a fierce voice chanted, but his throat locked and there was no breath in him for words, and so he prayed that Draco would look and see the question he could not ask, for fear.  
  
"You're welcome to stay," Draco said.  
  
/Do I have to leave?/ he had wanted to ask.  
  
/You're welcome to stay... You're always... that is to say, you're welcome here./  
  
"I will," Harry whispered. "Stay, I mean. Thank you. Thank you for making me welcome."  
  
His hand, he would remember, had been on the post of the door. Draco's hand had covered it, and then had drawn him back inside.  
  
END  
  
Curiosa:  
  
The quotation is the opening line of Ovid's Metamorphoseon: "My mind desires to sing of forms changed into new bodies." The title is borrowed both from Ovid's poem, specifically the section describing the transformation of the youth Narcissus into the flower that now bears his name, and also from the Salvador Dali painting inspired by it (I've got a copy of it hanging in my study. It rocks!) You can see it here:   
  
www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=2987&tabview=text&texttype=10  
  
The lines of poetry in Severus' journal are from "O Fortuna," found in the 12th century collection of Latin/vernacular songs now popularly called the 'Carmina Burana' made famous by Carl Orff. "O Fortuna" is probably the best-known, and the lines Severus quotes are the final ones:  
  
'In this hour, without delay, strike the throbbing string, lament with me how the great man is crushed by fate.'  
  
Post-fic notes:  
  
Once again, I would like to thank all of you who have ever read this and told me about it for your feedback and kind support. I began this almost two years ago, and so many of you have stayed with me through thick and thin, and it's truly incredible and humbling to look back through the reviews and see some of the same names cropping up with words of encouragement, praise, coercion, etc.--and there have been several times when kindly-meant remarks have served as a goad to get me writing again, when I was otherwise stalled out or fallen flat.  
  
Special thanks to the LJ crew (Aja, Taradiane, and Dorrie) for recc'ing this to the world at large and being so supportive and generous, Shezan of HPFanficRecs fame, and Sarvi & co. at the Potter Slash Archive for giving this fic another home. Specialest thanks go to Ash, who has been a dear fandom friend for going on four years now and has read uncomplainingly almost everything I've ever written. hearts  
  
I only wish there was a better way to express my gratitude to all of you guys.  
  
Agimus, carissimae, grates.  
  
--HF., aesc.livejournal.com  
  
[05.18.2004] 


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